‘Caught Stealing’ is a familiar but still thrilling New York adventure

Darren Aronofsky goes back to basics with a slight but fun thriller, led by a game Austin Butler.

In 1998, Darren Aronofsky made his feature debut with Pi, a film set in the director’s native New York City, with much of the action taking place in drab downtown apartments, and Hasidic Jews among the characters.

Aronofsky has now made nine films, some of them super-acclaimed (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan), and others somewhat less so (The Fountain, as well as Noah, Mother!, and The Whale, his last three films, although those all have their admirers.)

Now, he’s gone back to basics with Caught Stealing, a film set in the year of Pi, 1998, with New York locations as well as some Hasids. The budget, though, is much higher,

I’ll defend 2017’s Mother!, which is batshit in the best way, although The Whale is an abysmal film that’s utterly full of shit in every way. I have some quibbles with Caught Stealing, but it mostly represents a return to form for Aronofsky.

Caught Stealing is based on a 1998 novel by Charlie Huston, who also wrote the screenplay. Austin Butler stars as Hank Thompson, once a promising baseball player, who caused a car accident that killed his best friend and cost him his baseball career.

Now 30-ish, he lives in New York and is a depressed, alcoholic bartender, living in a run-down apartment, and occasionally hooking up with a witty EMT (Zoe Kravitz.) He also still roots for the San Francisco Giants, although following an out-of-market team was a lot harder in 1998 than it is today.

When his neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) skips town, leaving his cat behind for Hank to care for, Hank is set upon by two rival groups of criminals, who want a MacGuffin, in the form of a key, that belongs to Russ.

One side has a pair of Russians, with a Dominican boss (Benito Martínez “Bad Bunny” Ocasio) and the other is a duo of Hasidic Jews (Vincent D’Ononfrio and Liev Schreiber.) Also along is a police detective (Regina King, doing an odd version of a New York accent.)

Yes, it’s yet another story of a complete novice going toe-to-toe with hardened criminals and somehow not getting killed immediately. This guy, at least, has a past as a professional athlete. It’s also set at a key time in the history of that part of New York, with Rudy Giuliani long entrenched in office and gentrification overtaking the Lower East Side. The building the characters live in, by now, has presumably been town down and replaced by a highrise.

The film is carried by Austin Butler, who’s really starting to emerge as a legit movie star. With his hair and beard, Butler looks remarkably like former NFL quarterback Nick Foles, although in some scenes he more resembles a Top Secret-era Val Kilmer.

Playing a British punk, sporting a high mohawk that’s about 15 years out of date, Matt Smith delivers easily his most enjoyable movie performance.

There’s going to be some discourse, I predict, about the film’s depiction of ultra-Orthodox Jews as duplicitous violent criminals. I expect a thinkpiece within days that this sort of negative representation “isn’t what we need right now.” But this Jew didn’t mind, especially because Schrieber and D’Onofrio are a delight.

Like Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest, it’s a crime film that uses New York quite well, and even features a chase scene aboard a subway on the way to a baseball game (it’s the defunct Shea Stadium, this time.) But Caught Stealing doesn’t have nearly as much to say, about New York or anything else.

Scorsese is an influence, too- Griffin Dunne is on hand, as a tribute to After Hours, with that film’s 40th anniversary a couple of weeks away. And the Hasidic Jews visit their bubbe (Carol Kane!), in an echo of the appearances by Scorsese’s mother (as Joe Pesci’s mom) in Goodfellas. And speaking of mothers, stay tuned until the end for a casting surprise.

I was more bothered by the early ejection of a character that seems needlessly cruel, as well as a few lapses in realism, such as a dirty cop with not the slightest hesitation about appearing with her criminal co-conspirators in broad daylight. Later, two criminals gun down a social club full of people in the middle of a city, and then return to the scene of the crime an hour later to retrieve their car.

Butler is an ex-baseball player and obsessed San Francisco Giants fan, who for some reason never mentions the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run race that was happening that very summer.

And as is usually the case with prominent movie animals, I wasn’t nearly as charmed by that cat as I guess I was meant to be. There’s nothing quite as profound as the “Llewyn is the Cat” stuff in the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis.

Despite all that, Caught Stealing represents a return to form for its director.