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PORTSIDE CULTURE
CAUGHT STEALING IS A WILD AND VIOLENT ROMP
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Eileen Jones
September 2, 2025
Jacobin
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_ Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing sees the typically pretentious
auteur shift gears toward fun and violence in late 1990s NYC. It’s a
throwback to gritty 1970s filmmaking but set in the Giuliani era —
the perfect setting for downwardly mobile 2025 _
Still from Caught Stealing. , (Columbia Pictures)
As far as I can judge, the primary complaint about Darren
Aronofsky’s generally well-reviewed — though not very popular
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new film, _Caught Stealing_, is that it’s not a typical Darren
Aronofsky film.
But that’s exactly what I liked about it. I’ve been a nonfan of
Aronofsky’s since_ Pi_ put him on the map back in 1998. It’s
good to discover so late in the game that Aronofsky can tackle a nice
lowdown genre movie and pull it off with a certain élan.
With a script by Charlie Huston adapted from his own novel_ Caught
Stealing_ is a darkly comic crime film about an alcoholic bartender
named Henry “Hank” Thompson (Austin Butler) living in the grimy
Lower East Side of New York City in 1998. He’s got a dingy little
apartment; a hot girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz); and a passionate
love of baseball, especially the San Francisco Giants. He also has a
tendency to wake up suddenly from bad nightmares of a youthful car
accident that ended his professional baseball playing prospects.
One night, in the wee hours after he closes the bar, Hank comes home
and runs into his punked-out Brit neighbor in the next-door apartment,
Russ (Matt Smith). Reluctantly agreeing to cat-sit for Russ’s
long-haired gray tabby, Bud, seems inconvenient but harmless enough.
However, for reasons he can’t initially fathom, Hank soon winds up
in the middle of violent rival interests on the hunt for both Russ and
a huge stash of drug money. Hank’s first encounter with Russian
mobsters leads to a beating that puts him in the hospital. When he
gets out, he’s minus one kidney.
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Still from Caught Stealing. (Columbia Pictures)
That means no more drinking — or that’s what it _should_ mean
— but there’s a lot of pressure involved in dodging goons, and
alcohol is everywhere at home and at work and at all points in
between. Hank hopes to get some help from a tough local cop named
Detective Elise Roman (Regina King), but her best advice is to call
her if he ever encounters a pair of Hasidic Jewish gangsters called
the Drucker brothers, Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent
D’Onofrio), because they’re “real monsters.”
Before long, Hank is on the run all over New York — Flushing
Meadows, Shea Stadium, Coney Island — either evading or forming
temporary alliances with the various factions, including the Drucker
brothers, who take him to a Shabbas dinner at the home of their Bubbe
(Carol Kane). Nightmarish odysseys through cities are a film noir
staple, of course, and might also remind you of Martin Scorsese’s
black comedy _After Hours_ (1985), even before you realize that
Hank’s wizened, hard-bitten boss is played by the star of that 1985
classic, Griffin Dunne.
Oh, it’s a hell of a cast, with surprising famous faces popping up
everywhere.
So I enjoyed _Caught Stealing_ quite a bit. But then, I’m not
shocked at the combination of wild violence and broad humor shot
through with occasionally surprising poignance. I’ve always been
devoted to film noir, my favorite filmmakers are the Coen brothers and
I was raised on Looney Tunes. Even with that sterling background,
however, I admit there were a few harsh twists in the narrative that I
didn’t see coming and were even a bit shocking. But that’s to the
movie’s credit, I think.
_Caught Stealing_ is overlong, true, and drags a bit toward the end.
But Butler is charming as the hapless alcoholic antihero trying to
dredge up new strength of character to face his troubles and show his
girlfriend that he’s a guy “who can handle his shit.” Even if it
isn’t, technically, _his_ shit — just his neighbor’s shit he
got stuck with that soon got mixed in with his own shit.
It’s important to note that the film features a great cat character
in Bud, who regards human behavior with wary attentiveness. “He’s
a biter,” Hank frequently has to warn people. Hank doesn’t want to
cat-sit initially, but when all the violence puts the cat in harm’s
way too, Hank quickly finds himself in the role of Bud’s defender
and friend.
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Still from Caught Stealing. (Columbia Pictures)
Forming a friendship with an animal makes sense in the lonely and
threatening world of film noir, and if you know the genre properly,
you know that cats have played significant roles in a few key films.
One is _This Gun for Hire_ (1942), with Alan Ladd’s star-making
lead as a cold-blooded hitman who only cares about two creatures in
the world, a stray cat he adopts and Veronica Lake as Ellen. Another
is _The Asphalt Jungle_ (1950), in which the tough diner owner Gus
(James Whitmore), who befriends marginalized criminal characters in
need, also cares for an abandoned kitten and throws out one customer
who objects. And Robert Altman’s neo-noir _The Long
Goodbye_ (1973) features an unforgettable reinterpretation of Raymond
Chandler’s famous pulp-fiction detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott
Gould), newly incarnated as a hapless 1970s misfit who can’t even
get any respect from his cat.
Aronofsky’s New York City of 1998 seems to lean backward toward
1970s movies in its beautifully shot funk, filth, and graffiti, as
well as its memorably offbeat characters just struggling to get by.
There used to be a lot of ’70s films about people trying to make a
big score so they could escape a hopelessly corrupt and depressing
life in America, which was the natural fallout of Watergate, the
Vietnam War, and the exhaustion following a decade of furious social
protest that was fast losing its momentum.
The sad echo of that kind of film in our current cinema makes sense
right now.
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Contributors
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin, host of
the Filmsuck podcast, and author of Filmsuck, USA.
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