NEW YORK (OSV News) – Practically everyone is quirky and philosophical, and nearly everyone dies violently in the rapid-fire thriller “Caught Stealing” (Sony).
As directed by Darren Aronofsky, Charlie Huston’s screenplay, adapted from his 2004 novel, seems intended to present viewers with a comic parade of oddballs. It also smacks of the type of nihilism in the service of comedy that was once the hallmark of Quentin Tarantino’s films.
In fact, the movie’s wildly high splatter factor is not only deliberately over-the-top, but appears pitched there to draw laughs. No sooner has a character’s utility to the plot been used up than he or she buys the farm. While this tends to blunt the impact of the wall-to-wall mayhem, it also suggests a frivolous attitude toward the value of human life.
In 1998 New York, Lower East Side bartender Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) inhabits an environment of squalid apartments, trash-filled sidewalks and violent mobsters. Internally, moreover, he’s haunted by regrets.
Once an aspiring professional baseball player, his future in that regard was doomed by a car accident that caused the death of a teammate and crushed one of Hank’s knees. To make matters worse, he was driving at the time.
“I had so much!” Hank drunkenly exclaims to his compassionate and understanding paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) at one point. “It was right here. And now, it’s all garbage!”
Hank’s dead-end life takes a surprising turn when his British neighbor Russ (Matt Smith), a punk rocker who sports a giant Mohawk, tells Hank he has to go to London for a while and asks him to take care of his pet cat, Bud.
What Russ doesn’t tell Hank is that hidden inside a novelty plastic poop in Bud’s litterbox is the key to a storage unit in which Russ has stashed $4 million in laundered money he’s purloined from organized crime.
So Hank is initially bewildered when an array of different gangsters display their ruthless determination to get at Russ’ cache. These ethnically diverse thugs include some Russians in track suits, a Puerto Rican gang led by Colorado (Benito Martínez Ocasio, a.k.a. Bad Bunny) and black-clad Orthodox Jewish brothers Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio).
The portrayal of these paradoxically observant siblings borders on offensive stereotyping but doesn’t quite cross that line. They’re shown gleefully shooting up a nightclub but they also dragoon Hank into attending Shabbos dinner at their grandmother’s (Carol Kane) house, offering him a kippah for the occasion.
“I don’t suppose you’re Jewish, are you?” Lipa asks Hank during the drive to Bubbe’s.
Hank seeks assistance from police detective Roman (Regina King), but she turns out to be corrupt and in league with the Russians. So the chase continues until Hank can figure out a way to dispatch all of his adversaries before they succeed in killing him.
“Caught Stealing” has an intricate plot and features character actors leaning hard into their roles to keep the picture compelling. But there’s a nasty undertone to the proceedings that seems likely to alienate all but a few of the grown moviegoers for whom alone this frenetic actioner is acceptable.
The film contains off-kilter moral values requiring mature discernment, constant gun and physical violence with occasional gore, fleeting upper female nudity and pervasive rough language. The OSV News classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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