Caught Stealing ★★★

Availability: Showing widely in theaters. No streaming or other purchase options at this time. As a SONY picture, it will come out on Netflix, though the dates are estimated from a few weeks from now until December or even January. Check JustWatch here for the latest rental and purchase options.

When Backstories Matter

Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Stealing” is a sometimes charming, sometimes nasty film. It’s also one in which backstories—or their absence—explain the feelings, motivations, and actions of principal characters. The second half, dominated by aggression, violence, car chases and the like, features 2 pairs of really, really bad guys—the Russians and “The Hebrews.” The Russians (Nikita Kukushkin, Yuri Kolokolnikov) have no backstory, except they exhibit stereotypical Russianness; their badness simply is. The Hebrews (Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio) are given a backstory: when they’re not killing people, they’re nurtured and fed matzo ball soup by Bubbe (Carol Kane), while they piously proclaim “the world is broken” (the idea is from the Old Testament) and ruminate about a “mitzvah,” referring to the duty under Jewish law to perform acts of kindness. Their backstory defines them as hypocrites.

Austin Butler (as Hank) and Zöe Kravitz (Yvonne) have undeniable chemistry, even though one is a small-town boy and the other a savvy urbanite.

Punk Brit Russ (Matt Smith) unspools his own backstory while frantically driving around, but it’s pretty much incomprehensible—a sign that there is a formal need to know the reason the story circulates around Russ and his cat (cue an animal to test various characters’ emotional IQ; the Russians kick the cat) and his key and his storage unit. Opening the unit, Russ says, “Welcome to Narnia,” the land beyond the wardrobe where one is caught in the battle between good and evil. Russ’s stream of words, while ostensibly revealing the character’s history and motives, also underscores that they are not germane to the narrative. Perhaps screenwriter Charlie Huston felt the need to cram in facts from his book on which his script is based.

"Welcome to Narnia," says Brit Punk Russ (Matt Smith),

introducing Hank (Butler) to his well-equipped storage locker.

Policewoman Roman (Regina King, Oscar winner for “If Beale Street Could Talk” [2018]) also recounts her own backstory, a woe-is-me lamentation of a tough upbringing on New York City’s Lower East Side, where she is still captive because of her job, and how she’s “not going to end up there,” setting the stage for her to take unpredictable actions in order to keep that promise.

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Yvonne (Zöe Kravitz) is a captivating amalgam of flashy, angular sexuality, big-city savvy, resourcefulness, and maturity.

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Yvonne (Zöe Kravitz, “Kimi” [2022]) is a captivating amalgam of flashy, angular sexuality, big-city savvy, resourcefulness, and maturity (she takes in the cat). Unlike her boyfriend Hank (Austin Butler, Oscar-nominated for “Elvis” [2022]), she’s grounded. And unlike Hank, she has no backstory and a minimal current story—for a reason that will be revealed.

"The Hebrews" (Liev Schrieber left, and Vincent D'Onofrio, right) are one of 2 sets of

really, really bad guys who inflict suffering on Hank (Butler, center).

Just as Hank is at the center of things, so is his backstory. In the present, Hank is a night bartender and an affable, somewhat naïve, charismatic party guy, an irresponsible young man. He greets Yvonne’s overtures to a long-term relationship with near silence, as if, despite their obvious compatibility, he is unable to imagine such a commitment and future. To underscore his niceness, we see him regularly checking in with phone calls to his mother back home. Without giving away too much, Hank’s backstory describes a past as a small-town guy and talented baseball player, on the cusp of being a high major league draft choice (along with his best friend), when he suffers a career-ending knee injury. This loss, and others, have affected him deeply, consuming him with remorse for past moral failures and producing a kind of nihilism. “Caught Stealing” is about Hank emerging from what John Bunyan, in The Pilgrim’s Progress, called the slough of despond.

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What is the nature of Hank’s responsibility for the incidents that haunt him?

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Given what can be known about what Hank did, thought he did, and didn’t do, Aronofsky (“Black Swan” [2010], “The Whale” [2022]) raises questions that linger long after the closing credits. What is the nature of Hank’s responsibility for the incidents that haunt him? Is he morally to blame? Is he an agent in bringing on one incident or another? Is he experiencing what is known as survivor guilt? What, if anything, should he own up to or, as Yvonne counsels, not run away from? And what was, by any reasonable measure, beyond his control? It may be asking too much for Huston and Aronofsky’s narrative to cohere, that is, make sense, as an ethical matrix.

Hank’s journey concludes rather improbably with our protagonist living out not his dream but Roman’s: at a Tiki resort somewhere on the Mexican coast, Bud the Cat (cat actor Tonic), who has played a role in Hank’s emerging concern for others, lounging on the bar in fat feline satisfaction as Hank demonstrates adult self-control by ordering club soda. Quite the couple.

Although this ending emphasizes Hank’s small-town roots, much of the film, set in 1998, is a love letter to a dark but electric 1990s New York City: piles of garbage, drug addicts on the street, graffiti, back alleys and fire escapes, apartment hallways with nosy neighbors, the black-and-white cookie (common in the New York metropolitan area), and Kim’s Video, a now-defunct movie-rental business, made famous in a 2023 documentary.

The production’s mid-way turn from drama to cruelty, action for its own sake, and gratuitous violence (the Hebrews’ shooting spree, inside and outside a wedding venue, is absurdly overdone), while not unusual in contemporary cinema, impairs the story rather than strengthening it. The revenge has notes of Tarantino, where it can be satisfying (“Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” [2019]). Aronofsky can’t quite pull it off, and so the mayhem becomes more black cloud than fun. The story is damaged too by the script’s simplistic focus on the “key,” when the lock in question could easily have been broken with the stroke of a hammer. (In Spike Lee’s recent “Highest 2 Lowest,” it was “follow the backpack.” Here it’s “follow the key.”)

Fortunately, Butler’s screen presence—he’s like Brad Pitt in his good-guy-with-a-punch persona—overshadows these and other transgressions, and his chemistry with Kravitz is undeniable. Despite everything that intervenes, viewers may come away remembering when Hank and Yvonne couldn’t get enough of each other, when they were maybe, even, in love.

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He says: Who needs Freud when you’ve got an understanding cat?

She says: Watch for the Laura Dern cameo. 

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Date: 2025

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Starring: Austin Butler, Zöe Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Nikita Kukushkin, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Carol Kane, Laura Dern, Tonic the cat

Runtime: 107 minutes

Country: United States

Language: English, Russian, Yiddish (the last 2 sometimes subtitled in English)

Other Awards: None to date