Caught Stealing

• Directed by Darren Aronofsky
• August 29, 2025
• Based on the 2005 novel Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston

A bartender crosses New York City criminals while pet sitting for his punk neighbor.

Critics loved Caught Stealing and the online film fan community liked it so I decided to watch it. Cannot say I was as impressed as I thought I would be or just impressed at all. It is described as a dark comedy but where are the laughs? There is ‘weird’ but no dark jokes. The term ‘comedy’ covers a broad group with movies that aim to be strange getting room under its shade. I think a new word is needed. When I think ‘comedy’ I think stuff that makes you laugh. Maybe a smile at worst yet not weird or annoying mixed with style.

It has quite the cast with most being quite talented. Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bad Bunny, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane doing her slightly screw loose performance in an all to brief appearance only slightly longer that that of Laura Dern.

It’s just such a slow-moving movie. It takes its good old time getting everywhere. It mistakes traveling for something happening. Fidgeting or pointless banter for character or character development. Aronofsky mistakes antics or padding for story or action. Often it’s just a lot of nothing that doesn’t move the story long. Quirks and style are used in place of substance. If they had eliminated all the dead air or cut it down, Caught Stealing would’ve been a much better movie.

Hank (Austin Butler) is a bartender who has some emotional baggage involving an accident he keeps having flashbacks over. As often as it is flashbacked to and a point made of his refusal to drive, I saw that the accident was going to play some part in the finale. How I couldn’t quite get but when it was set up, I knew it was coming. So much of this movie can be seen coming a mile away. Aronofsky shows no willingness or ability to not be obvious. There are no surprises with what should be an emotional core being empty. What exactly is interesting about Hank to make him worth watching? He is a mopey bartender with an alcohol problem that managed a hot chick while wallowing in self-pity. The cat is more interesting.

Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) wants to start a relationship with Hank. Like any dude he is happy roll in the hay with her with no strings but decides to try anyway. Yet when problems start and he begins to have an existential crisis she abandons him in the street and then comes back to help him out when he gets his ass beat. Does she know anything about him or is sex used as lazy shorthand for blind love?

As a character Yvonne is the very definition of an inconsequential film girlfriend. She doesn’t provide the heart of the story for Hank. The whole point of the character’s existence is to piss off Hank when he sees her very unique lighter so that the end can happen. Never in the history of film has an unusual piece of property been introduced and not been important so another thing that was telegraphed.

Given the marketing of Caught Stealing, I expected Matt Smith as Russ Miner to be in more of this movie than he actually was. He’s an important character that accidentally gets the ball rolling and causes Hank to get wrapped up in everything but is gone for maybe half or more of the film before he comes in and then is gone again. Smith is an excellent actor. I greatly enjoyed his work in Doctor Who and in the handful of other things I’ve seen with him in he’s sometimes been the only bright spot.

Smith put more effort into his performance than Butler did. Smith is chaotic and all over the place just like you would expect a man with a few screws loose and probably a drug habit to be. It’s entertaining and engaging and when he is gone when he is there is a noticeable absence. Butler was just uninteresting. His sadness was generic.

When everybody thinks gangsters, they think ‘Italian mob’ but there are other ethnic and social groups with their own organized crime. Russian mobsters in this aside, there are the notorious Hasidic Drucker brothers Lipa and Shmully (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio respectively) who provide some character color. Mix it in with Regina King as the corrupt Det. Elise Roman and there is much to make this funny or definitely entertaining as Hank tries to figure out what is going on and how to get out. Yet it was often a chore.

I think the problem is Aronofsky trying to straddle the fence between serious and comedy rather than committing to one. In an effort to have his cake and eat it too, he ends up with not much of anything. Genuine dark comedy is an ever increasingly lost art. You should laugh despite yourself. It’s wrong to laugh when a character dies but done right that guilt makes it a little bit funnier. Deaths are played as tragically as they can but the dramatic elements and the self-pity make this far too emotionally weighty to be a comedy.

Despite many things going in its favor, Caught Stealing failed to click. Not weird enough or funny enough or serious enough. I say skip.