CAUGHT STEALING – Review by T.J. Callahan
Caught Stealing: Go Giants!
Everyone around Hank ends up dead. After the punk rock next door neighbor asks Hank to watch his pet cat when he goes out of town, the former high school baseball phenom with a haunted past finds himself pursued by ethnically specific, motley mobsters who want something Hank doesn’t know he has.
Caught Stealing is adapted from a well regarded crime novel of the same name by Charlie Huston and stars Austin Butler as Hank. His teammates, good guys and bad, consist of Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bad Bunny (billed as Benito Martinez Ocasio), Griffin Dunne and Carol Kane. Directed by Darren Aronofsky, Caught Stealing is a departure from his usual dark dramas (The Whale, Black Swan). Aronofsky doesn’t swing for the fences, but places the perfect bunt to advance the script, move his stars around the plot and squeezes out a few laughs scoring with this late summer full count of fun.
Set in the late 1990’s in New York City, Caught Stealing tries to please all audiences. There’s criminal activity, violence, a little romance, motherly and grandmotherly love, Russian henchmen, Orthodox Jewish gangsters performing mitzvahs while concealing their tzitzit and silencers, a Puerto Rican kingpin, corrupt police and a sweet cat who’s poop is the root of all evil.
There are hits and misses in Caught Stealing, but it definitely doesn’t strike out. Butler finally loses his Elvis accent and steps up to the plate as this film’s lead off batter.
Buy some peanuts and Cracker Jack and stay through the initial end credits for some extra inning game play.
My husband Ricky proudly declared he kept two 👀s open.
Caught Stealing slides up to a 6.5 on the TeejFlixometer. It’s a great airplane movie.
