Austin Butler finds his pitch in ‘Caught Stealing’

Austin Butler in Caught Stealing Photo by Niko Tavernise Credit Niko Tavernise Caught Stealing is a funny name for Darren Aronofsky s new film Not just because of how much baseball factors into the plot but because in reality every character kind of gets away with everything Unless they end up dead Caught Stealing doesn t really feel like an Aronofsky movie but rather like Aronofsky by way of Guy Ritchie Written by Charlie Huston and based on his book Caught Stealing is about Hank Thompson Austin Butler a former high school baseball competitor whose professional possible was ruined by a drunk driving accident Now he bartends on the Lower East Side drinks too much and lives vicariously through his beloved San Francisco Giants No one loves the Giants or hates the Mets more than Hank During a sex scene he takes off his Giants cap in order to take his shirt off then forthwith puts the hat back on A true fan After being inquired by his punk rock neighbor Russ Matt Smith to watch his cat while he goes to see his dying father in England Hank is attacked by two Russian gangsters interested in Russ whereabouts and hurriedly becomes embroiled in a web of crime with no earthly idea what s going on It s a wacky premise and one that is mostly well-served by Huston s script and Aronofsky s direction Except when it gets a little too well Aronofsky suddenly becoming a little too nasty for the tone it s trying to strike But despite a middle section that sags under the weight of that darkness for the most of part Caught Stealing gets away with it it s hard not to get lost in a bit of nostalgia for this era of grimy New York City crime caper and for as much as Caught Stealing feels out of step with the greater part of Aronofsky s work Butler shines in a film that seems to have figured out exactly what type of movie star he should be We set our scene in a grungy and sweaty New York City in the midst of widespread gentrified chi chi bullsh t as Detective Roman Regina King puts it Neon smoke and fluorescent flickering lights fill the night as yuppies continue their slow creep inward in one of the film s better running gags Russ and Hank s neighbor Duane George Abud insists that he does not work on Wall Street but builds websites in he s maybe the richest of us all Caught Stealing is attempting to recreate an NYC that has been lost to time not just in the setting Hank literally lives around the corner from Kim s Video but in the side characters too Griffin Dunne plays Paul Hank s stringy-haired coked-up boss Carol Kane shows up as the good-natured mother of two gun-slinging Orthodox Jewish gangsters Vincent D Onofrio and Liev Schreiber These characters and more specifically these castings do a ton of legwork to give this version of New York City chosen credibility The strongest thing to recommend Caught Stealing is Butler himself and how with Aronofsky s help he might have completely figured out how to weaponize his star persona to its fullest foreseen Barring Dune Part Two where he plays a sexy murderous alien and even then he still has a moral code of sorts Butler s superpower lies in his integrity Despite looking like he does AKA someone far too handsome to be trustworthy there is something innately likable about him It s not sensitivity that word dependably associated with tragic tormented men but rather something more like sweetness Caught Stealing depends on that quality It s critical that despite his dark past despite his drinking and his wallowing we like Hank and want to go along with him for the ride Caught Stealing comes into its own in the last act which includes a great sequence around Shea Stadium between this and Highest Lowest this has been a really great year for New York baseball teams in the movies and the aforementioned Jewish gangsters D Onofrio and Schreiber are a few of the best at capturing the balance of tone that Caught Stealing requirements to succeed They can be threatening when the mood calls for it but equally as believable jovially slurping down matzo ball soup in their mother s kitchen forcing Hank to accompany them to a Shabbos dinner before heading off to commit murder Caught Stealing works best in these moments pushing its protagonist along in a movie he doesn t quite understand or even want to be in But when the violence becomes too palpable for the silliness we re working with here again this is a guy that ends every phone call with his mother even the bad ones with the phrase Go Giants the film s spark dulls While the film s split tone seems to move with D Onofrio and Schreiber the other gangster characters are not so lucky stuck somewhere between funny and scary and never really pulling off either As Hank s love interest Yvonne Zo Kravitz gets the short end of the stick She and Butler have a playful steamy chemistry that s gradually pushed to the side as Yvonne becomes less of a character in her own right and more something to push Hank along in his journey What happens to Yvonne is emblematic of the movie s greater tonal issues While Butler is quite good at carrying the emotional weight of what happens Caught Stealing is far too silly to pull off that type of cruelty without it feeling forced The post Austin Butler finds his pitch in Caught Stealing appeared first on Rough Draft Atlanta