Caught Stealing (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Darren Aronofsky

Starring:  Austin Butler, Zoe Kravitz, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, Carol Kane, Matt Smith, Regina King, Bad Bunny

Caught Stealing is about as straightforward a story as Aronofsky has told in his long career.  It's an action drama with comic elements about a New York bartender named Hank (Butler), whose British punk rocker next door neighbor Russ (Smith) hurries back to Britain and asks Hank to watch his cat for him.  No issues so far, until Hank is soon embroiled in a plot battling the criminal element over stolen money and drugs.  He's Hitchcock's classic "innocent man wrongly accused" and we're also reminded of Dustin Hoffman's Babe Levy in Marathon Man, who is also drawn into a plot he doesn't fully understand even as a Nazi doctor is drilling holes in his teeth. 

Hank was once a major leaguer in the making during his high school playing days in California until a car accident kills his friend (who was a passenger) and wrecks his body enough to where playing baseball competitively is now a pipe dream.  Years later, circa 1998, Hank is working as a bartender and muddling through life until Russ leaves his cat with Hank and also a backlog of criminals looking for him.  What do they want with Russ?  And later Hank?  Hank has no idea, but a police detective (King) is suspicious of Hank at first, then seems to be willing to help him escape his quandary.  

Hank wasn't built for this, but he finds himself learning to be meaner and more resourceful as he deals with killers like Hasidic gangster brothers (Schreiber and D'Onofrio), who have no issue killing people but don't want to drive on the Sabbath or not show up for shabbos dinner for fear of possibly going to hell for violating Hasidic laws.  Maybe the criminals themselves feel for Hank because he was left holding the bag by Russ, but hey, they want what Russ stole from them, and someone has to pay when they can't collect. 

Caught Stealing is a darkly comic action film in which Hank finds himself in one damned thing after another.  He never asked for this mess.  His girlfriend Yvonne (Kravitz) winds up paying the price.  The movie ends satisfactorily if not necessarily happily.  After all, Hank loses nearly everyone he loves, except for one person who may be a bigger San Francisco Giants fan than he is.  Butler isn't channeling Elvis, he's just a sympathetic hero who never expected his humdrum life to be turned upside down.  On this level, Caught Stealing works like a charm.  It isn't deep and it isn't tragic...thank goodness.