Who knew Darren Aronofsky had a fun side?
The acclaimed director of Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and Black Swan is best known for his dark, brooding dramas, but his latest film, Caught Stealing, is an unexpected pivot into much more playful territory.
Aronofsky establishes this newfound playfulness right off the bat (pun intended), opening with a visually imaginative transition from a dirtied subway wall to a baseball diamond’s home plate. From here, we get tossed into late ‘90s New York City, where we meet Hank (Austin Butler), a baseball prodigy-turned-bartender.
Hank lives for a few things in life: his mother, his beloved San Francisco Giants and his girlfriend Yvonne, a punk rocker paramedic played by Zoë Kravitz. But all that’s put in jeopardy after Hank agrees to watch his neighbor’s cat — a decision that turns his life into a deadly game of cat and mouse with New York’s criminal underworld.
Butler, who previously flirted with leading man status in the 2022 biopic Elvis, turns in his most convincing performance to date as the cool and charismatic Hank. Butler mixes unflappable charm with slow-burning unease as his one unlucky night in New York goes from bad to worse to somehow worse than that.
The film’s descent into a New York City nightmare mirrors Martin Scorsese’s 1985 cult classic After Hours, whose star, Griffin Dunne, appears in Caught Stealing in a supporting role. Aronofsky may have been paying homage to Scorsese's film with that clever bit of casting, but Caught Stealing proves to be much more than mere imitation.
It’s a modern triumph of old school filmmaking, mixing crowd-pleasing thrills and original storytelling in an era when adult-oriented films rarely succeed on the big screen.
In other words, Caught Stealing doesn’t just take place in the ‘90s; it feels like it could have been released then, too. And in today’s cinematic landscape — when superhero fatigue is all too real — that’s nothing short of a home run.
