CAUGHT STEALING - Mark Reviews Movies

Caught Stealing, Columbia Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 28, 2025

So much of the plot of Caught Stealing feels too formulaic for the manic energy director Darren Aronosfky attempts to—and often does—bring to the movie. To be sure, there is also a bevy of eccentric characters, played by a game cast, to distract us from how point-to-point Charlie Huston's screenplay is, but if these characters actually were as odd and impulsive as the script tries to make them out to be, would they really just fall in line with the necessary beats and course of this narrative?

Basically, the entire movie, based on Huston's own novel, feels too constructed for its own good, especially when it comes to the assortment of clichés that pop up and become essential components of this story. Take our hero, for example. He's a seemingly ordinary guy named Hank (Austin Butler, who does prove himself to possess that elusive quality of a movie star here). He mostly seems that way because, without the plot surrounding him, we'd have no reason to care about anything that he does.

Because of the plot, though, he gets to reveal himself to be quite resourceful, even within a situation of escalating danger and complexity that would probably stymie most people, and, because he is protagonist of a movie with a lot of terrible characters and awful things happening, a generally decent guy. There's a whole philosophy of screenwriting that revolves around the notion that the hero must prove worthy of the audience's sympathy and support by having a moment in which said hero is seen saving a literal or metaphorical cat. Huston's script takes that concept literally, by giving Hank a cat that he must decide to rescue several times over the course of the plot.

Even if one doesn't know about that school of writing, the cat would almost certainly stand out here—and not simply because it is a cute and, despite being a bit bite-happy, good kitty. At a certain point, wouldn't it make more sense and show far more care for the feline for Hank to find anyone or any place that will look after it, so the poor cat isn't being abused, threatened, shot at, and involved in multiple high-speed car chases? If Hank's character—apart from his love for San Francisco's professional baseball team—is essentially defined by how he deals with the cat, does that not, in a way, make that cat the most important figure in the story?

This is mostly to say that the movie is ultimately predictable, regardless of a couple of twists that may be shocks in the moment but don't really change anything substantial about the course of the plot itself, and generally shallow. It is, also, occasionally funny and, when the actors get to chew up several scenes and Aronofsky blows through its contrivances with the propulsion of his filmmaking, a bit entertaining. It's a very mixed bag.

The plot, which starts quickly and doesn't cease until just before a brief epilogue, has Hank, a hard-drinking bartender in New York City circa 1998, caught up in some mess involving drugs and millions of dollars in cash. His neighbor Russell (a mohawked Matt Smith) asks Hank to watch his cat while he returns to London to see his ailing father, and soon enough, a couple of Russian gangsters show up looking for Russell. Hank tries to explain that his neighbor isn't around at the moment, and they beat him until one of his kidneys bursts.

As for the rest of the business, it features a key hidden in fake cat poop and a bunch of characters who, despite how much personality the actors may bring to them, really only do serve the plot. They include narcotics detective Roman (Regina King, intimidating and world-weary in equal measure), who bluffs her way through trying to find out if Hank is involved, and Puerto Rican crime boss Colorado (Benito Martínez Ocasio, the rapper who's fast becoming a solid character actor), who flashes his pistol as an interrogation technique but might be the sort of person to actually use it, and a fraternal pair of Hasidic Jewish mobsters (played by Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio), who are ruthless in trying to obtain the drugs and/or money but still observe the Sabbath.

Even Hank's girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), who seems vital as her own person and in trying to help Hank clean up his act, turns out to exist solely as a plot device in a way that undoes everything about her. When that happens, it sours a lot of goodwill for the movie's supposed interest in these characters.

To be fair, Arronfsky's sense of momentum in keeping the narrative moving, as well as his staging of several chases through the streets of and at some out-of-the-way landmarks in the city, does help significantly. It's difficult to become too hung up on a particularly egregious cliché, such as what Yvonne's role turns out to be and all of the stuff with the cat, when the movie itself rarely relents in going from one plot point to the next.

For stretches, Caught Stealing might convince that it's a volatile crime thriller in which anything can happen to and because of its unique characters. That is until the movie's reliance on formula and clichés makes it plain that there's nothing really unpredictable or special about it.

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