Caught Stealing: Liev Schreiber, Austin Butler, and Vincent D’Onofrio – Photo: Niko Tavernise / Columbia Pictures
Ready for his closeup in the ’90s-set action-comedy Caught Stealing, Austin Butler is framed staring directly into camera more than once, his soulful eyes a clear window into his ill-fated character Hank Thompson.
The film — directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Charlie Huston, based on his own 2004 novel — makes smart use of Butler’s cherubic face and strapping physicality to solidify Hank’s cred as a former high school star baseball player, now a nice guy bartender in a dive bar on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
His girlfriend Yvonne, a saucy paramedic played by Zoë Kravitz, even delivers a whole speech about how nice a guy Hank is. The movie also captures its stars’ off-the-charts chemistry, solidifying Hank and Yvonne’s emotional bonds through the couple’s genuine caring for one another and cute shared catchphrases.
They bond more sensually in a sizzling love scene that turns up the heat just by showing the pair undressing from opposite sides of his bed, maintaining eye contact the whole time. Although Hank and Yvonne aren’t officially official, they’re clearly committed and have each other’s backs.
That’s one thing Hank has going for him when he’s yanked into a no-bullshit, life-or-death gangster situation, after thugs come looking for his punk rocker neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) but find him instead.
Scrambling, problem-solving, out-of-his-depth, Hank races to stay steps ahead of pugnacious goons Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin) and Aleksei (Yuri Kolokolnikov), Hasidic gangster brothers Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio), Latin enforcer Colorado (Benito “Bad Bunny” Martínez Ocasio), and dogged NYPD Detective Roman (Regina King) pursuing him for murder.
Bodies start to drop fast in this caper, often with morbidly amusing timing. Yet, while the movie constantly plays the sudden, blunt-force violence for laughs, Hank takes these events dead seriously, as Butler reflects with unguarded sensitivity.
Caught Stealing: Zoë Kravitz and Austin Butler – Photo: Niko Tavernise / Columbia Pictures
It’s in the eyes, but not solely. Death matters in Hank’s world. He’s haunted by a recurring nightmare of the accident that ended his prospects of playing pro ball.
Now, he’s fighting for his life, while this mad, mad assortment of cops and criminals chases him down for, well, for what exactly, he’s not sure. And the film deftly maintains most of its mysteries through shrewd plotting.
It also benefits from shrewd casting. Griffin Dunne, drolly funny as bar owner Paul, Hank’s boss and backup, makes an A-1 addition for anyone who knows Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, the ne plus ultra of whatever-can-go-wrong comedies, and a clear inspiration here.
Similar in structure, both films share a colorful vision of the New York City underground as a bizarre alternate universe unto itself. Propelled by Hank’s desperate attempts to pull himself out of the quicksand, and every time sinking deeper, Caught Stealing spirals into chaos at the right rapid pace.
Coming off the Oscar-winning schmaltz-fest The Whale, Aronofsky modulates this movie’s comedic and action beats expertly, sprinkling in bouts of bloody violence, and a handful of tensely dramatic scenes, well-acted by this able cast.
Butler is at his most compelling in a simple scene of Hank calling home to his baseball-loving Mom in California. At a particularly precarious moment, he just wants to let her know he’s ready to take accountability for mistakes of his past. Everything will be okay, he assures her, if he can just take back control of his fate. If he can outrun ruin one more time, he might still have a future.
Caught Stealing (★★★★☆) is Rated R and is playing in theaters nationwide. Visit www.fandango.com.
True love curdling to bitter hatred has rarely hit harder or funnier onscreen than in Danny DeVito's ice-cold 1989 comedy The War of the Roses. Barbara and Oliver Rose, played by '80s screen team Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas, start out adoring each other in the hit adaptation of Warren Adler's novel. So besotted (and aroused) are the well-matched pair, they can barely keep their hands, lips, and other parts to themselves.
By story's end, though, he's pissing on her fish dish in front of dinner guests, and she's driving her monster SUV over his vintage Morgan roadster with him inside it. He (accidentally) kills her cat. She fakes killing his dog and feeding it to him as pâté.
Returning to the historically tense spring of 2020, Eddington, from writer-director Ari Aster, lands in a strangely familiar Twilight Zone of an America emerging from lockdowns, still gripped by fear and confusion over the pandemic, and roiling with anger over racial injustice.
It's late May in the dusty desert town of Eddington, New Mexico, and the distancing, caution, and paranoia, the fights over protocols and masks worn below the nose, have seemingly pushed folks here to their breaking point. Amidst the eerie calm of mostly empty streets, the atmosphere crackles with the potential for catastrophe.
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