CAUGHT STEALING (2025)

Way way back in the 90s, I saw the little psychological thriller Pi (1998) written and directed by up-and-comer Darren Aronofsky. It was different; a stylized black and white arthouse mystery about a mathematician searching for a number that would unlock nature’s secrets and universal patterns. Roughly a year later I saw the little black comedy crime film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) written and directed by up-and-comer Guy Ritchie. It too was different and stylized, albeit a British caper about three friends who lose a rigged poker game to a powerful crime lord. These dissimilar films were released about a month apart, but Lock, Stock didn’t arrive to the North American market until nearly a year later, hence the lag. So what’s my point? Well if you’d told me at the time that 27 years later the director of Pi and subsequently Requiem For A Dream (2000), The Fountain (2006), and Mother! (2017) would make a film that takes place in 1998 and is tonally and thematically closer to Lock, Stock and it’s follow-up film Snatch (2000), I’d have said “Bollocks!”. But here we are and Caught Stealing is the least Aronofsky film I’ve seen to date. This doesn’t mean it isn’t good, it is and you do see shades of the Aronofsky we know and love byway of its jarring violence and focus on self-destructive characters in an specific and immersive setting. Yet the tone is lighter and the usual subtext, if there at all, is buried well beneath a linear plot and its central imperfect, yet relatively straight ahead good guy hero Hank (Austin Butler). Setting the film in 90s’ New York is an impressive feat with the chaos of the city amplifying the chaos Hank is “caught” up in. Once again Butler shines as does the cast swirling around him, notably Matt Smith, Hank’s punk rock neighbour Russ, Zoë Kravitz, girlfriend Yvonne, and Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio as two of many adversaries hot on Hank’s tail. I was half expecting some heavy-handed commentary or biblical overtures to come to light, but the film is character and plot driven, which in itself from Aronofsky, kinda threw me. The film has a fun, throwback feel that is unlike anything we’ve come to anticipate from the director. Is Aronofsky attempting to time travel? We see the twin towers more than once and the racial representation of the characters is certainly 1998 to the point of being naive. Is Aronofsky subverting our collective expectations of his films? Or is he simply making a crime film à la contemporary Ritchie for his own enjoyment? Sincerely, who cares? It’s violent, fun and a little silly. Aronofsky has made some truly uncomfortably unforgettable films and perhaps he wanted to revisit a time when just being different was shocking enough.

WATCH OR NOT: WATCH

Additional musings: There is an animated sequence featuring the cat character during the credits that reminds me of the start of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and its animated Santa credits…so that’s different.