Movie Review: Caught Stealing (2025)
Directed by Darren Aronofsky Starring Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Regina King, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Benito A Martínez Ocasio
Darren Aronofsky plunges into the darkly comic underworld of 1990s New York with Caught Stealing, an audacious crime thriller laced with black humor and violent chaos. Based on Charlie Huston’s cult novel, the film is a stylish descent into mayhem, anchored by a career-defining turn from Austin Butler.
Butler stars as Hank Thompson, a washed-up former high school baseball prodigy who’s traded the pitcher’s mound for pouring shots in a seedy Manhattan dive bar. Life isn’t perfect, but it’s stable—he’s got a loving girlfriend (Zoë Kravitz), a favorite baseball team on a miracle run, and a low-key existence that suits him just fine.
That is, until his eccentric neighbor Russ (a gleefully unhinged Matt Smith) asks him to look after his cat. What seems like a simple favor quickly spirals into a nightmarish chase through the city’s underbelly.
Soon, Hank finds himself hunted by a violent rogues’ gallery of gangsters and lowlifes (including heavy-hitting performances from Regina King and Vincent D’Onofrio), each convinced Hank has something they want. The twist? He has no idea what it is.
Aronofsky balances grit and surrealism with remarkable precision, blending the absurd with the deadly in a way that keeps audiences off balance. The film’s black comedy hits hard—one moment you’re laughing at a bizarrely staged interrogation, and the next you’re reeling from a brutal burst of violence. It’s a world where no good deed goes unpunished and survival means out-hustling hustlers.
Cinematographer Matthew Libatique captures the gritty textures of ’90s New York in neon-soaked noir hues, and Clint Mansell’s score pulses with tension and sleaze. But it’s Butler who carries the film, transforming Hank from an everyman to an unlikely antihero, battered but defiant, navigating chaos with grit and dark wit.
With Caught Stealing, Aronofsky delivers a genre mashup that’s part Coen Brothers, part Scorsese, and entirely his own. It’s a frenetic, blood-stained ride through a world where survival means thinking three innings ahead—and never trusting a neighbor with a cat.
Release Date: August 29, 2025
Clever, chaotic, and darkly funny. Aronofsky’s crime caper is a wild swing that knocks it out of the park.
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