NOW IN THEATERS! Darren comes up barren in the New York caper crapper Caught Stealing, directed by Darren Aronofsky, a guy who usually makes much better movies than this. Set in the Lower East Side in 1998, Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) pours drinks at the dive bar owned by Paul (Griffin Dunne), as his star-studded baseball career was cut off before it began by a tragic event. Hank drinks to forget, talks baseball on the phone with his mother (Laura Dern), and also sees EMT Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz) when he gets off work.
His next-door neighbor, a studded leather punk rocker named Russ (Matt Smith), needs Hank to look after his cat, Bud (Tonic), as Russ needs to fly back to England because his Dad had a stroke. While Hank looks after the cat, he encounters two thugs, Aleksei (Yuri Kolokolnikov) and Pavel (Nikita Kukushkin), who are searching for Russ. When Hank tells them Russ isn’t home, they savagely beat him and put him in the hospital. He loses a kidney and is told by Yvonne that he cannot drink anymore.
“While Hank looks after the cat, he encounters two thugs…who savagely beat him and put him in the hospital.”
Detective Roman (Regina King) lets Hank know that Russ was being investigated by the narcotics squad. She also warns him to be on the lookout for two Hasidic Jews called Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio), as they are very bad dudes and not to be messed with. If he sees them, he is to call Detective Roman immediately. It isn’t long after that when Hank spies Lipa and Shmully with bolt cutters and guns, working their way into Russ’s apartment next door.
For anyone expecting a Guy Ritchie-style rumpus from the preview is in for a rude surprise. Ritchie has a rapid-fire style filled with cinematic goodies, while Caught Stealing is a plodding meander that flagrantly overestimates its appeal. It reminds me of the advance hype around Get Shorty being the next Pulp Fiction, setting it up to be the letdown of the year. I didn’t even have that high of hopes, I just showed up to see Dr. Who in a mohawk and his cat. Don’t get a lot of the Mohawk. Did get a lot of the cat, but it isn’t all that mesmerizing and pales to the kicks of a regular cat video.
"…a plodding meander that flagrantly overestimates its appeal."
