Review of Caught Stealing, directed by Darren Aronofsky

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

When I was in graduate school and working as a critic on the side, I spent a lot of time at my local AMC movie theater branch. For our friends outside the United States who might not be familiar with AMC, it’s a national chain around the States. They offer a subscription model where if you pay a set amount per month, based on where you live, and you can see four movies a week. Basically, if you see two movies a month, you got your money’s worth.

I was hitting up the local movie theater almost every weekend to stay on top of the new releases for work, which also led to burnout, but once I quit my critic gig and lost my car (a teenager totaled it because they weren’t looking when they were on a main road), I ended up cancelling my AMC A List.

The summer of 2025 was when my sister and I decided it was time to get A List again, and even though I started an 8-5 job right at the end of August, I’ve still been seeing movies. Today’s blog post is dedicated to one of those movies: I am happy to report that I saw Caught Stealing at the theaters.

Let’s get into the review! I feel like my introductions have gotten a little bit long, so I’m testing out shortening them for the sake of my reader’s time. I know that people aren’t coming here for a huge backstory, nor a ton on me.

An innocent man gets caught up in the world of crime in New York City during the 1990s, leading to devastating consequences.

Our main character in this movie is Hank, who, at the beginning of the film, is an undefined relationship with Yvonne, a paramedic, and he works at a bar where’s chummy with the owner and regulars. Every day he makes a point to call his mom back home in California to discuss the San Francisco Giants. Hank was once a shining star on the baseball scene, but, as we see in his traumatized flashbacks throughout the movie, he got drunk in high school while driving with a friend, killed the friend, and destroyed his knee.

In the present day, Hank comes home from work with Yvonne. As they’re ready to go inside his apartment and have some steamy sex, his punk rock and British neighbor Russ flees out of his apartment and begs Hank to take care of his cat. Turns out his dad is dying and he needs to go back to London. While Hank is reluctant to take the cat after Russ leaves, Yvonne grabs the litter box and brings it the apartment after the cat wanders in.

The next morning, after Yvonne goes to work, Hank goes to Russ’ apartment but it caught by two Russian mobsters at the door and beaten. He's left bleeding on the floor as his neighbor Duane calls the police, and when he comes to, Yvonne tells him he lost a kidney. Hank asks to leave, as he definitely cannot afford the hospital bill, and she informs him he can no longer drink on the way home.

However, the Russians come back and break into Russ’ apartment, with Hank narrowly escaping their focus on the fire escape. Detective Elise Roman now wants to talk to Hank after this, as she’s on these guys’ trail. Turns out Russ is involved with the gangs and a drug dealer, and Roman tells him to be careful of the Hebrews, two Hasidic gang brothers.

Hank finds a key inside of a fake poop toy in the cat’s litter box, then he calls Roman about it. She doesn’t pick up, but he heads to his workplace and ends up getting drunk. He forgets about the key, but when he comes to later that night, the Russians and a Puerto Rican, Colorado, are in front of him. He also pissed off Yvonne before this point, as he told her his life was garbage now.

They ask him about the key, but Hank was so drunk he has no idea what he did with it. Duane ends up saving the day after the Russians rip out some of Hank’s stitches, then he goes to Yvonne. He leaves the cat with her then goes to the bar, but is intercepted by the Hebrews. He evades them as they chase after him, but when he calls Colorado to tell him about the key, he brings up Yvonne.

Hank slams the phone down and goes back to her apartment. She’s laying in a pool of her own blood, having been executed by gunshot. He ends up in front of roman yet again, who takes him to a diner and asks him to tell her everything. Turns out right after that she’s involved with the Russians and Colorado, and they go to the bar. Colorado kills Amtrak, a regular at the bar, and then Roman guns Colorado down.

Paul, Hank’s boss, then lies and says the key is in the safe, but then pulls out a shotgun and tries to take them down. He gets gunned down and Hank locks himself in the room with his boss’ body. He’s pinned on the blame for the murders, but he finds the key in the clothes he abandoned while drunk, then hits Russ with a baseball bat when he reenters his apartment.

Russ then explains everything to him. Turns out he worked for the Hebrews, then Roman got involved because she owes money to the Russians. He has Hank get in the car with him, then shows him the $4 million he was supposed to split to people, but he went to London, as his dad was actually dying. As Hank calls his mom, Russ almost kills him and turns him into the fall guy, but Hank manages to knock him out.

He talks to Roman, then decides to turn Russ and the money over to her for the cat. In Flushing Meadows, Russ kills one of the Russians and the duo escapes with the cat, but Russ dies on a subway car with Hank because of the damage done from the baseball bat and ensuing fight. Hank takes the cat and gets on a bus to Coney Island, then passes out on the beach.

The next morning he wakes up to a call on Russ’ phone from Roman. He’s now been pinned for everything, and if he doesn’t meet Roman with the goods at the Russian club then his mother is dead. He calls his mom after to tell her to go away from their house, and he then calls the Hebrews. He tells them Roman has the key, and they decide to kill her then decide what to do with Hank after they get the money.

They bring him to his mother’s Shabbos dinner, and she happens to take a liking for him. As they prepare to gun down Roman and the crew in the club, they zip tie Hank to the car then head inside. Roman escapes in the chaos and Hank, using a lighter in the car, escapes and goes after her. He is unable to gun her down, but then the Hebrews show up and do it for him.

He then reveals he hid the key in the cat’s bandages. They tell him while he’s driving they’ll let him live with the money, but then when one of the brothers asks Hank to light his cigarette, he realizes that they have Yvonne’s lighter. He thought Roman killed Yvonne earlier, but then they confess they killed her. He purposely crashes the car after noticing he’s the only one with a seat belt on.

This kills the brothers. Hank then uses Russ’ passport to leave the United States with the cat and half of the money. He ends up in Mexico, in Tulum like Roman once wanted to, and watches baseball on the beach. In the credits scene, his mother opens up a package and discovers the rest of the money in it.

Overall Thoughts

I was interested in the movie largely because of its setting—New York City in the 1990s. I don’t know why, but movies set in New York City have been calling me lately, especially if they’re in lower Brooklyn. I went to Brighton Beach recently for the first time because of Anora and had a great time. It’s now become one of my favorite neighborhoods to hang out in.

Anyways—I thought this movie was fine. It wasn’t my favorite because of how messy it became. We see the psychological impacts of what’s happening to Hank throughout the film, but maybe because he doesn’t have time to process it we kind of lose his connections to those who died because of what he got sucked into.

Yvonne comes to circle back in later in the film, that’s for sure, but what I’m trying to get at is this film felt a little messy to me. Austin Butler does a good job of holding it all together and is definitely the main component of this movie. He does a great job and sells his journey as a character, but I wasn’t sold on the film as a whole.

The pacing also felt a bit off to me. I saw it in theaters and found myself thrown out of it in random little scenes, and it was during those moments I questioned to myself when this was going to end. That wasn’t a good sign throughout.

Anyways: if you’re interested and haven’t seen it, give it a chance. I thought it was an interesting movie, but it fell short of my expectations. I can see others loving it though!

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