Star Cast: Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, and Liev Schreiber.
Director: Darren Aronofsky
What’s Good: The first half of the movie goes full style, even if it is one we have seen executed so much better before.
What’s Bad: The script is just boring, with cardboard characters and a lot of setup with limited payoff.
Loo Break: The third act becomes so predictable that you could just go to the loo and not miss much at all.
Watch or Not?: This is one of those lazy Sunday movies to watch as background noise, totally inoffensive.
Language: English (with subtitles).
Available On: Theatrical Release
Runtime: 107 Minutes
User Rating:
Darren Aronofsky has always been an auteur, a type of artist with a distinctive style and with enough experience to make that style unique among the massive number of filmmakers working today. However, it seems that Aronofsky is experimenting with his own abilities by making Caught Stealing a film that tries to copy the style of someone like Guy Ritchie. And while the technical aspects of the film are solid, this Aronofsky film completely lacks the humor and energy of Ritchie’s work.
Caught Stealing Movie Review: Script Analysis
Darren Aronofsky is one hell of a filmmaker! He has been making films for decades at this point, and as such, it is obvious that he can film and put a solid movie together. Of course, he has a very particular style, one that can really turn off some people, but with Caught Stealing, I have to say that it doesn’t really matter if people don’t “get” Aronofsky’s style; it is what makes him interesting to watch, because when lacking that style, well, there is not much there.
Caught Stealing is a sort of rejected Guy Ritchie script, filled with clueless protagonists, corrupt cops, peculiar criminals, and fast pacing that will probably make you disregard certain aspects of the plot, because that is the point, don’t think about it too hard, just let it flow. Charlie Huston, the film’s screenwriter, works mainly as a novelist, and you can tell because the film lacks a certain level of characterization that can only be applied by an expert screenwriter who knows that it only has a certain amount of minutes instead of endless pages to flesh out the characters.
The plot also meanders a lot, going all over the city, but nothing meaningful really happens, as our main character is just colliding with a very bad streak of luck. And so, with nothing meaningful happening, the movie becomes boring relatively fast, and not even the fast pacing can help it, which is sad, because everyone is doing their best, but the source material doesn’t match the actors or Aronofsky’s talents behind the camera.
Guy Ritchie’s most memorable films, like Snatch, have a similar style and a fantastic cast of actors, but they have a different energy thanks to the clever humor and the willingness to go into the absurd, while still keeping it grounded. Caught Stealing lacks this sense of chaos, and so, everything feels performative.
Caught Stealing Movie Review: Star Performance
While the plot and the story don’t really amount to anything satisfactory, the cast is filled with great actors all doing their best with the source material, especially Austin Butler, who has already proven to be quite an actor. But here, he is trapped playing Hank, the film’s protagonist, who is just bland, even when his backstory is definitely tragic; nothing really comes from it, only a couple of callbacks that feel quite amateurish in execution.
Zoë Kravitz looks fantastic as ever, but her character is quite minor, and for what it is, well, her talents could have been used better somewhere else. Regina King is the other major character of the piece, but just like with everyone else, the character is underwritten and lowers the stakes quite a bit, as there is no real sense of danger anywhere, especially for a film called Caught Stealing.
Caught Stealing Movie Review: Direction, Music
From a directional point of view, Caught Stealing is a very interesting film because Aronofsky has basically departed from everything we know him for and entered a new territory, not a particularly original one, but a new one nonetheless, and it is pretty interesting seeing him dwell in that space. But sadly, the results are not satisfactory, because, as we said before, any others, including Guy Ritchie, the master of this type of film, have done it before, and better at that.
Rob Simonsen’s score also doesn’t strike any particular chord, and it is quite forgettable, but then, the composer, while very busy, hasn’t done anything really amazing in the music department as of yet.
Caught Stealing Movie Review: The Last Word
Caught Stealing is a sort of failed experiment on Aronofsky’s part, because it really doesn’t have anything that truly stands out, and what it has is something others have done better. It could be that, yes, Darren Aronofsky’s originals don’t make enough money, and they only bring awards, but stuff like this movie won’t make a lot of money either; the market is just too competitive for films like this to stand out among the crowd.
Caught Stealing Trailer
Caught Stealing released on October 10th, 2025.
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