Darren Aronofsky is accustomed to surprise us. Starting with his directorial debut with ‘Pi’, going through the exceptional ‘Requiem for a Dream’ and ‘Black Swan’ to ‘The Whale’, including a few failures along the way, always original and uncomfortable. His latest film, ‘Caught Stealing‘ (2025) written by Charlie Huston who adapted his own novel for the screen, surprises precisely because … it doesn’t surprise. The film seems to be inspired by the creations of the Coen brothers or Tarantino, themselves innovative and different filmmakers from one film to another, but the feeling of ‘déjà vu’ cannot be avoided.
The hero of the film is Hank Thompson, a former baseball player whose career was interrupted by a car accident that comes back to haunt him in nightmares, an accident in which he lost not only his physical abilities but also his best friend. The relationship with Yvonne, an emergency services paramedic, seems like a chance for him to recover and to get rid of alcoholism. A neighbor leaves his cat in his care during a hasty departure to London to take care of his sick father. What follows will completely change the life of the film’s hero and will end the lives of many around him. The friend’s departure was perhaps an escape, gangs of murderous criminals and corrupt police officers are at war in search of a large sum of money whose (real) key is somewhere in the neighbor’s apartment. The feline will play an important role in the story.
The script is written pacely and something surprising always happens, but the story itself is not the most successful part of the film. The characters are interesting, they evolve and offer interesting facets even when they take on stereotypes. The atmosphere of southern Manhattan in 1998 is very well rendered, a few years before it turned into a rich bohemian area and with the twin towers still dominating the landscape. Austin Butler shines in the lead role, creating a complex character, who at the end of the film is completely different from the one at the beginning. The entire cast does its job with professionalism, highlighting the story with pace and surprises, and the black humor that makes this quite violent film funny at the same time. The cat deserves the not yet defined Academy Award for the four-legged actors. The only element that was missing was the originality that we expected from a Darren Aronofsky film, but that does not mean that ‘Caught Stealing‘ is not a very successful entertainment.