Caught Stealing (2025)

By: Mike Ward on Friday, August 29

R Running Time: 107 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Caught Stealing finds director Darren Aronofsky feeling a bit edgy again, blending dark humor with intense violence and some twists and turns along the way.

  • If there were still doubters on Austin Butler’s leading role capabilities, he carries the film with charisma and physicality and is every bit as talented as advertised.

  • Cinematographer Matthew Libatique shoots the film as if everything is a little grimy and dirty, amplifying the sleazy elements of Charlie Huston’s source material.

NO

  • The storytelling in the final act drag this out a lot longer than it needs to be.

  • The villains largely underwhelm, or fail to rise to the potential promise they have. Exceptions include Bad Bunny and the duo of Hasidic assassins, who could stand for more character development.

  • For all the film’s reveals and surprises, nothing comes as a shock.


OUR REVIEW

A man and his cat are not easily separated.

Darren Aronofsky’s gritty, darkly comedic New York City crime caper Caught Stealing reminds us of this fact time and again. A departure from the director’s recent work, Austin Butler stars as Henry “Hank” Thompson, a melancholy bartender who inherits a Siberian forest cat from neighbor Russ (Matt Smith). Russ, with his giant spiked mohawk and punk-rock aesthetic, suddenly has to split town to go back to England to see his ailing father.

Hank doesn’t want to take on the care of Bud, the cat portrayed by Tonic, but his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) convinces him. And almost immediately, two Russian thugs come looking for Russ. Instead, Hank is the one beaten outside his apartment so badly, he wakes up in the hospital, two days later, minus a kidney. 

Unbeknownst to Hank, Russ left something very important behind: a key. And unfortunately for Hank, seemingly everyone in the criminal underworld of New York City wants it. 

From there, Caught Stealing becomes a dark, bleak comedy with suspense and action sequences in pretty much equal measure. Hank is consistently trying to evade a whole host of bad guys, who, in turn, deal in double-crosses and betrayals. As many of the film’s reveals and surprises are easy to see coming, or even telegraphed fairly regularly, the film still pulses with a nervous, almost hyperbolic energy.

Butler is excellent in the leading role, as his Hank is a bit broken and frayed around the edges. Once championed as a high school baseball prodigy who cannot miss in the major leagues, his character’s withdrawn personality emanates from a decade-old tragedy which ruined everything. And now he is a bartender, leaving voice mails back and forth with his mother, as they rave about the San Francisco Giants. 

The ensemble circling around Butler’s performance is fun, but scattershot in terms of true effectiveness. Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio play two Hasidic assassins, whose love of violence and overall wild presence could have used more screen time. We have two Russian heavies who may be vicious villains but come off as caricatures. And then Bad Bunny (credited under his real name of Benito A Martínez Ocasio) arrives as a gun-toting Puerto Rican bad guy named Colorado. As someone who does not like to get his hands dirty, Bunny plays his borderline-disgusted villain perfectly with his relatively short screen time. 

Cinematographer Matthew Libatique shoots the film as though there’s a layer of smudge and grime on everything. That reoccuring sense of not being clean is a constant and makes the film feel a little extra dangerous and sleazy as events unfold.

Screenwriter Charlie Huston adapts his novel of the same name into a snappy, quickly-moving story. And Aronofsky still finds ways to make the violence and rhetoric matter, as we cannot help but root for Hank to survive and see another day.

Butler does step out on his own here effectively. He is such a fascinating actor to watch because he understands how simple movement, from a curled smile and stare to rugged physicality, all has powerful meaning. 

And we would be remiss if we did not give a shout out to Tonic, a cat as expressive and charismatic as any feline on screen in recent memory. If anyone gives cat acting awards this year, I have to think Tonic is the odds-on favorite thus far. 

Far from Aronofsky’s best work, Caught Stealing finds the director telling stories with confidence and a bit of a swagger again. While there are those who enjoyed Aronofsky’s Oscar-winner The Whale, it has been a while since he has felt like he was this precise in how he wanted to blend genre-styles together and paint outside the lines a little bit. 

Though it could tighten up its final 15-20 minutes, I remained entertained with Caught Stealing. Butler is fun, the ransack cast of supporting characters offer laughs, and the movie provides us an entertaining thrill ride. I would certainly never wish to exist in the types of situations Hank finds himself in. However, seeing how he navigates all the twists and turns thrown his way does make for a mindless and occasionally blood-soaked barnstormer of a crime comedy.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz, Regina King, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Benito A Martínez Ocasio, Griffin Dunne, Carol Kane, Yuri Kolokolnikov, Nikita Kukushkin, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Brill, Action Bronson

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Written by: Charlie Huston
Based on the novel “Caught Stealing” by Charlie Huston
Release Date: August 29, 2025
Columbia Pictures