Surely I can’t have been the only one to notice that there’s been a clutch of modest thrillers popping up that’s hoping to bring the tone of the quirky 90s crime flick back to cinema. However, as of late, they’ve mostly ended up being a pale imitation of the best examples of the genre. If you staked me four million dollars in misplaced criminal funds, I never would have bet on Darren Aronofsky of all people being the one to crack the code and deliver the breeziest crime flick in years; but here we are as the auteur has taken time out of his busy schedule from depressing the shit out of us to finally let his hair down and have a little fun.
While it’s admittedly tough to see any of the man who made Requiem For A Dream or The Whale in a film that unleashes comedy punk rockers, criminal misunderstandings and a charismatic feline tying the plot together, that’s not to say that Caught Stealing doesn’t find Aronofsky in robust form.
The year is 1998 and as alcohol dependent, ex-baseball player Henry “Hank” Thompson tends bar on the Lower East Side, he has no idea that his relatively simple, if booze sodden, life is about to get a whole lot more complicated. While his existence is hardly a bed of roses thanks to the devestating car crash that ended his career, he chats to his baseball-obsessed mother every day on the phone to discuss the San Francisco Giants and has a caring could-be girlfriend in the form of shapely paramedic, Yvonne, between knocking back bottles of beer.
Shit starts to go south thanks to Hank’s punk rocker neighbour, Russ, who has to hastily return to England on a personal matter and asks if he could keep on eye on his cat, Bud while he’s gone. But when Hank later heads to Russ’ apartment to get more food, he’s targeted by a couple of Russian mobsters who have come looking for the extravagantly mohawked punk for various criminal reasons. After a prompt beating, that sees Hank ultimately have to have a ruptured kidney removed which seriously effects his ability to drink. However, he’s barely given time to recuperate when matters get even more complex and way more dangerous when he talks to narcotics detective Roman.
She tells him that Russ is a drug dealer who has seemed to have found himself between Hasidic brothers Lipa and Shmully Drucker and the Russian mob and their Puerto Rican associate, Colorado, in some sort of scheme that involves just over $4 million in cash that both sides want a piece of. As Russ is still in England, somehow all the attention has fallen upon Hank who has to appease both the Russians, the Hebrews and the police while still keeping himself, his loved ones and even Bud the cat out of harm’s way.
Can our absurdly attractive loser manage to find a way out of the deep shit he’s rapidly sinking into without getting majorly fucked up by the various psychos that are gunning for his clueless ass?
A gritty crime romp certainly isn’t what you’d expect from such a maker of heavier fare; but then it’s not like Darren Aronofsky has a set style to grasp to. It’s not like there’s some clean, obvious, narrative lines that link The Wrestler with The Fountain and the devestating effect of Requiem For A Dream doesn’t seem to have much in common with the likes of Noah, or The Whale. However, not unlike the way the similarly grim David Fincher blew of some steam with the glossier Panic Room, Aronofsky seems excited to put the nightmarish metaphor of Mother! or the identity crisis of Black Swan in his rear view temporarily in order to make something decidedly lighter.
Of course, “lighter” in regards to Aronofsky means slightly different to a filmmaker such as, say, Guy Richie, and you can tell that the filmmaker probably obsessed like a motherfucker making sure that the late 90s feel of the film extended way beyond simple needle drops or the occasional hairstyle. In fact, of all the period set films we get nowadays, Caught Stealing really does accurately capture a New York crawling itself out of the filth of the 70s and 80s that still seems genuinely bewildered with its new found respectability. However, I could go on for ages about Aronofsky’s past films and how his attention to detail has given us a film that feels like it’s genuinely set during the decade of quirky, perky crime epics, but that won’t tell you if the film is actually any good. Well, Aronofsky’s shift to a (slightly) lighter shade proves to be the best throwback to the 90s crime genre that we’ve seen in a while.
The secret to any movie playing in this sandbox is casting the right people to play the eccentric cast of freaks and weirdos and the film gets off to an early head start by casting an Austin Butler who seems to have spent a fair bit of time studying at the Matthew McConaughey school of shirtless acting. However, while the actor does seem to spend an awful amount of time either with his chest out or just chilling out in just his underwear, Butler may be an abnormally good looking man suffering an alcoholic dependency; but he’s vitally likable which proves to be important when the misunderstandings and botched choices starts mounting up. Also, more than being just a gorgeous schlub, both Aronofsky and Butler ensure that Hank has enough legitimate past trauma and flaws to not only make him three dimensional, but to have us rooting for the poor bastard as various uncaring goons descend upon him. Such is the style of the genre, everyone else naturally slots into the various roles of the ensemble – Zoë Kravitz is given the rather basic girlfriend role, but ultimately does a lot with a little and evokes genuine warmth for what could have been a throwaway character. Elsewhere, Matt Smith is obviously have a huge amount of antisocial fun from beneath an epic mohawk as Russ and Regina King attempts to smother the situation in no-bullshit law and order as a cop trying to wrestle this farce into some sort of sense. Also adding to the fun are Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’onofrio as a murderous pair of Hasidic brothers, Carol Kane as their kindly mother, Bad Bunny as the preening Colorado and, possibly, most telling of all, Griffin Dunne as Hank’s grizzled boss at the bar. You see, with Dunne’s involvement we stir up unavoidable comparisons with Martin Scorsese’s nightmarish 80s farce, After Hours, that saw a similarly innocent man buried under a metric ton of dangerous misunderstandings and you can’t help but wonder if Aronofsky is directly referencing that earlier classic every time Hank hits another roadblock or outlandish twist.
Of course, despite all this talk of Aronofsky shooting for a much lighter tone, the filmmaker still brings the serious when he needs to with a couple of brutal turns that provide the odd nasty surprise or two, but in general, the director manages to balance the heavier stuff with the fact that one of the major characters is a bafflingly charming, Siberian forest cat who manages to have as much fluffy screen presence as the human members of the cast. While I’d argue it could do with a bit of a zippier pace, Caught Stealing proves that modern filmmakers can still manage to emulate the quirky crime capers of the 90s to thieve a fun two hours of your time.
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