{"id":57701,"date":"2025-09-01T15:59:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T19:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=57701"},"modified":"2025-09-01T15:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T19:59:11","slug":"movie-review-caught-stealing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/09\/01\/movie-review-caught-stealing\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Review – Caught Stealing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d is one of those twisty crime thrillers where it seems like the filmmakers cast as many interesting names as they could and then wrote the movie around using them all. For example, at no point did I feel it was necessary for the film to feature Matt Smith as a character with a 60\u2019s U.K. punk rock aesthetic in this film set in New York in 1998 (itself an inexplicable choice). All the film needed was a neighbor character who\u2019s mixed up with some bad people. But the movie got Smith for the role, and somebody, possibly Smith himself, wanted to see the character played with the crazy getup. The result is a character that is a scene-stealer to be sure, but is the story really helped by all his quirkiness? I don\u2019t think so. If anything, he\u2019s a distraction from the main character, whose journey is supposed to be the focus. Though maybe it\u2019s for the best, because I wasn\u2019t digging the main character and was welcoming all distractions.<\/p>\n\n\n

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            Austin Butler stars as Hank Thompson, a disgraced former baseball prodigy barely scraping by as a bartender, and an alcoholic one at that. The one good thing in his life is his way-out-of-his-league girlfriend Yvonne (Zo\u00eb Kravitz). She\u2019s almost ready to start taking the relationship more seriously, which he wants, but first she needs him to start taking himself more seriously, which he isn\u2019t ready to do. Subconsciously, he\u2019d rather just spend all his time moping around and thinking about how his life would have been better if he hadn\u2019t crashed his car while drunk, thus ending his baseball career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Hank\u2019s neighbor Russ (the aforementioned Smith character) hurriedly puts him in charge of his cat Buddy while he leaves town for a few days. Hank\u2019s proximity to the shady Russ gets him into trouble with some Russian gangsters (Yuri Kolokolnikov and Nikita Kukushkin), which also leads to trouble with a Puerto Rican gangster (Benito Mart\u00ednez Ocasio aka rapper Bad Bunny), and eventually a pair of really dangerous Hasidic gangsters (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D\u2019Onofrio). Hank tries with increasing desperation to stay out of trouble with all five gangsters, and at least he can expect some help from hardboiled detective Elise Roman (Regina King). But running from his problems hasn\u2019t worked out for Hank in the past, is it a good idea here, even though for once his predicament isn\u2019t his fault?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            There\u2019s a good idea for a character arc here with Hank needing to learn to take responsibility for mistakes he\u2019s made in both the recent and distant past. But it was just too hard for me to respect the character after his incredibly stupid decision to go on an alcohol bender the night after losing a kidney, thanks to the Russians. I can understand straying from doctors\u2019 orders to a degree, I\u2019m not exactly an angel myself in that department, and I know every movie hero isn\u2019t going to be strictly by-the-book. But for the character to make a decision that stupid that quickly, sorry, I was done rooting for him. Which was a shame, because the movie is without the delightful Kravitz for a long stretch, leaving the film without a likeable protagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\u2019m giving \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d the mildest of recommendations, because the jokes are just funny enough, the action and suspense just exciting enough, and the overachieving cast just interesting enough for me to praise among an near-equal list of complaints. It\u2019s hard to believe a movie this middling came from usually-ambitious director Darren Aronofsky. Since this movie likes its baseball metaphors, I\u2019ll say that I associate Aronofsky with spectacular hits (\u201cRequiem for a Dream,\u201d \u201cThe Wrestler,\u201d \u201cBlack Swan\u201d) and the occasional spectacular strikeout (\u201cNoah\u201d), but \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d is an unimpressive single \u2013 avoiding an \u201cout,\u201d but just barely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCaught Stealing\u201d is rated R for strong violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality\/nudity and brief drug use. Its running time is 107 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d is one of those twisty crime thrillers where it seems like the filmmakers cast as many interesting names as they could and then wrote… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDlcL2ltYWdlLTIwMjUtMDktMDFUMTU1MTU5LjYxNS53ZWJwP2ZpdD04MTklMkMxMDI0JnNzbD0xIiwidHh0IjoiTW92aWUgUmV2aWV3ICYjODIxMTsgQ2F1Z2h0IFN0ZWFsaW5nIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiZm9udCI6IiIsImJsb2dfaWQiOjE2MzA0MDY2MX0.xE0At_erVSKMIz-GGPWzR71RPSDeT8CSGnPtc4OKvLEMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":57702,"url":"http:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/image-2025-09-01T155159.615.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[12121],"class_list":["post-57701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-review-caught-stealing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57703,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57701\/revisions\/57703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}