Jonah Naplan   August 29, 2025

“Caught Stealing” is an interesting, albeit bizarre, project for director Darren Aronofsky, whose movies have famously explored psychological, emotional themes and have largely been controversial among audiences for these reasons. This one will likely be fought over, too, not because it’s overly profound or thoughtful in any way, but because it’s simply a bad movie. A prime example of a one-dimensional script that fails the talents of everyone in the cast—which here includes Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Regina King, and Liev Schreiber, among many others—“Caught Stealing” feels noxiously low-grade. Not once does it offer up anything meaningful for discussion, like Aronofsky’s prior work, nor is it remotely entertaining enough from scene to scene to make such a shortcoming passable. It has many promising pieces, but this one ain’t a catch.

The movie takes place in New York City’s Lower East Side in 1998. Hank (Butler) is a lowly bartender without much to lose. He lives in a ramshackle apartment, his aspirations of being a professional baseball player cut short years ago after a tragic car accident killed his best friend (above all, “Caught Stealing” is a cinematic warning to always wear a seatbelt). These days, he only really cares about his girlfriend Yvonne (Kravitz) and his mother (played by a notable actress who only appears in the mid-credits scene?), with whom he shares a love for the Giants. Hank’s punk rock neighbor Russ is in trouble with some very bad Russian mobsters (Nikita Kukushkin and Yuri Kolokolnikov) who come kicking down his door while he’s off visiting his dad in London. In his attempts to stop them, one thing rolls into another and Hank gets tossed into the thick of New York’s criminal underbelly, finding himself involved with some of the city’s most dangerous thugs.

One of them is known only as Colorado (played by Bad Bunny, who’s recently been typecast as dynamic mercenaries between this and his role in “Bullet Train”), the brains behind an entire mobster organization dedicated to raising hell, and there’s another duo of Hasidic gangsters (Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio, respectively) who are themselves engaged in a turf war with the other group. New York ace police detective Roman (King) reveals herself to be a part of the equation, too, when she emerges as a threat to Hank’s loved ones early on, lest he can find and secure a stash of money stored by Russ in an undisclosed location, only accessed by a key hidden somewhere in Hank’s apartment.

Confused? Me too. By the time the script by Charlie Huston finishes setting everything up—and not all that well—there isn’t much time left in the movie. The first 30-45 minutes are rough as the status quo is established through bland love scenes and flat dialogue about Hank’s past (the movie’s recurring flashbacks to the tragedy followed by Butler waking up with a gasp, revealing it was all just a dream, is a bit that gets old really fast). There was real potential here for the character introductions to be something similar to that of a Quentin Tarantino or Guy Ritchie movie, and, at times, “Caught Stealing” seems to want to be that kind of film. There’s also pieces here of classic thrillers that expose the offbeat underbelly of metropolitan cities like “After Hours” and “Heat,” but the movie never truly gets there because of Aronofsky and cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s surprisingly unengaging way of shooting action.

The movie’s best sequences are ones that playfully poke fun at the conventions of the genre, even as the rest of the movie faithfully follows them. For one thing, Hank carries around Russ’s ferocious cat for most of the runtime, and often puts the feline’s safety before his own. For another, the bulk of the movie’s action takes place on a Friday night, so that means D’Onofrio and Schreiber must make a pit stop at their bubbe’s house for shabbos festivities before getting back to their business. The scene where Hank wears a kippah and slurps matzo ball soup out of politeness is the best in the movie, but might already be spoiled for anybody who’s seen the trailer.

Watching “Caught Stealing,” I was reminded of how sometimes charming actors aren’t enough to elevate poor material. After several hit projects, Butler has become an A-list star, but like other actors of his caliber—Glen Powell, Tom Holland, and Timothée Chalamet immediately come to mind—his charisma only works if the material is strong. Thus, Butler turns in a very boring performance in “Caught Stealing,” and it only picks up when the movie picks up, too. Kravitz is barely in the film and becomes only an afterthought once the real action gets going, while King, who’s been a force in movies and TV for decades, is plainly forgettable here. The dynamic of Schreiber and D’Onofrio’s characters is perhaps the biggest disappointment, and it’s at the fault of the filmmakers that the comedic potential that runs all through the veins of this duo instead becomes negative space.

There was also major potential here for a pre-9/11 New York City (characters are blunt about their disdain for Giuliani) to play its own character, especially in the third act which ties all the narrative threads together with little success. There’s minimal reference to or use of the time period whatsoever—one without cell phones or many of the location tracking devices we might take for granted today—aside from one or two minor comments from characters who acknowledge, faintly, that “Caught Stealing” belongs to a different era. One thing worth noting: the entire movie has a faded, film-grain look to it that’s superficial and distracting when it should be enlivening. If Aronofsky wanted to communicate the aesthetic of the 90s via digital-camera lens, he sure makes the decade seem dull and colorless.

Most curiously of all, I’m stuck on why the movie is called “Caught Stealing.” Hank isn’t a crook, nor would I say him stealing something is the object of the film. A part of me had the incorrect impression that the entire movie would be one long, exciting chase scene traversing the cityscapes of Manhattan, à la “The French Connection” or “Speed,” and a part of me still thinks it should have been that. Instead, “Caught Stealing” only really moves in fits and starts towards a climax that ultimately adds up to nothing. How can a movie possibly be so disjointed that even the title doesn’t make sense? It covers me with confusion.

Now playing in theaters.