Caught Stealing

19

It seems everything I’ve read over the years is being adapted to either TV or film. In retrospect, I’m surprised Caught Stealing wasn’t turned into a movie way before 2025. Considering this, the first novel in this crime fiction series, came out in 2004. If this was a British tale it would have Guy Ritchie written all over it. The main protagonist caught up in some stuff because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, which sets a course for a band of scary, quirky bad guys and corrupt cops to come after him. If you deleted the NYC setting, the involvement of baseball and the mostly American cast and just focused on the mohawked Matt Smith and Idles soundtrack, you might think that it was a Guy Ritchie movie. But, no, this thing is 100% American and is the first swipe at directing something even remotely in this genre by one of our better directors, Darren Aronofsky. Whom I’d like to thank again for fumbling the bag with Rachel Weisz so that I had a very small window of a chance (which Ms. Hipster said I could totally pursue) before 007 himself, Daniel Craig, swooped in with his abs and whatnot and crushed my dreams. Thanks, bro.

But there is something about this movie that feels distinctly old-school. A goofy, action-adventure crime comedy with plenty of slapstick, car chases, explosions and violence. Some of this nostalgia for a bygone era may owe to the fact the film is set in 1998. In a NYC that is distinctly more rough and rugged. As I well recall. Everything is kind of grimy and devoid of modern conveniences like cell phones and Internet-era glossiness. People are smoking real cigarettes and driving cars with actual hubcaps. It’s set in a Lower East Side where — unlike today’s gentrified condo-ridden landscape — things still felt a little dangerous. And this is where we find our protagonist, Hank Thompson (Austin Butler). A bartender and an alcoholic, he is probably the best looking and most ripped semi-functional drunkard in the history of the LES. I suppose that’s acceptable given the fact he was once on his way to being a high draft pick of a major league baseball team. Hoping it would be his beloved San Francisco Giants. At least Butler is believable in the role. Though all that drinking and seemingly no working out feels like he might have been a little more paunchy. Honestly, the most quaint, late-90s thing about this film is that a rudderless, booze-soaked bartender can pull a Zöe Kravitz-level girlfriend. Something that would never happen in 2025 America.

The plot is a relatively straight-forward one that involves a key that opens a lock to some place that contains money. Whoever can recover said key and figure out what lock it opens ends up with a bunch of presumably ill-gotten cash. Thing is, Hank isn’t really part of this game until his punk neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith), accidentally involves him. Turns out, Russ has this key, and for some completely unknown reason leaves it hidden inside a fake poop in a litter box that he gives to Hank, along with his cat, because he’s heading out of town to take care of his dad. Now, not to nitpick, but if you’re leaving a cat with someone to watch, along with his box with what appears like a giant turd in it, would you not expect at some point that this person might clean said box and pretty easily discover this giant turd is rubber and contains a key? Seems like poor planning. So, Hank discovers the key that unlocks the lock that holds the riches and is soon visited by all the dangerous-ass people looking for said riches. First, it’s the Russians. They beat him so hard — not even knowing that he has the key, but just not liking his attitude — that he looses a kidney. Then comes the gangster Hassids, Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio. Schreiber doing a convincing version and D’Onofrio clearly feeling a little skittish about Yiddishing it up too much for fear of — I don’t know — the whole thing feeling a little bordering-on-antisemetic (what with him being Italian and not actually Jewish).

Now, here’s where my brain goes because I’m a spoil sport. Why do these people all need this key? The key doesn’t have any markings on it. It’s not the typical key that you’d find in this movie trope that has, say, a locker number on it. Like every other movie like this where there is a key that opens a certain locker at the bus depot or whatever. No, this is just a normal Master Lock key that opens something somewhere. Meaning that having the key does nothing for them. All they really need is the info of where this Master Lock is and can go cut the lock off with some bolt cutters. So, torture the person or whatever for that info and just go get it. The key is just a key, so having it wouldn’t give its owner any clue as to where the money is. The book explicitly says that the key has that relevant info on it — the storage facility and the storage bay number. So, having that key gives the owner the relevant info — meaning that when Hank discovers the key, he immediately has that info that he does not have in the movie. This creates unnecessary ambiguity in the movie’s narrative that it really never resolves. Which is weird considering the original author, Charlie Huston, wrote the screenplay for the film.

That aside, the film moves along in a pretty predictable way, with Hank constantly being hunted down, grabbed, beaten and compelled to give up the giant bag of cash that is eventually in his possession. It’s been literally twenty years since I read the novel, so my memory of how many bodies this tale drops was not fresh. But, ultimately, pretty much everyone ends up dead. Which, rereading my own review of the book from 2005 was my impression of the novel as well. Hank survives, of course, since, you know, this is part of a trilogy. And the movie definitely softens his involvement in some of the violence. The deaths he causes are either accidental or passive in some way. He’s much less cold-blooded and a bit more likable here. Played to pretty great effect by Butler. Honestly, I don’t have a ton of experience with him and thought the whole Elvis thing meant he was just a gimmicky face, but the dude is pretty compelling on screen. Granted, he’s a little other-worldy looking to be believable as a dive bartender, but he pulls off the physicality, and has the comedic and dramatic chops to make the character come to life. Honestly, watching him and a spectacularly mohawked Matt Smith drive around in Smith’s shitbox car for 90 minutes would have been worth the price of admission. But, alas, they needed to kill Smith and move the plot ahead. Anyhow, there are bodies on bodies on bodies and a relatively rote progression of dirty cops (a gender-swapped Regina King) Russians and Hassidic gangsters all vying for the aforementioned inexplicably unmarked key that leads to the elusive bag of cash. The action is decent and the throwback 90s LES NYC — a time memorialized in Ms. Hipster’s Booze & Grub Survey — was captured nicely and boiled up a nostalgic gurgling in my gut. I’d say this is a decent in-the-background stream if you like a wacky crime comedy. One that doesn’t read particularly original, but will sit right in the pocket if you’re into that kind of thing.