Caught Stealing Review

Director Darren Aronofsky is presumably most well-known for his use of psychological realism, most of his films falling under the psychological drama category, creating various features that feel both disturbing and unpleasant to watch at the same time. He never falls into creating films that are unwatchable, but his films are meant to be dark and psychologically complex, with films like 2000’s Requiem for a Dream, a film about four drug addicts who fall into a world of delusion. 2010’s Black Swan falls into the psychological horror category, following the pursuit of a woman into insanity as she attempts everything possible to become cast in a role that will change her life when trying to pursue. 2017’s Mother! continued the director’s pursuit of the psychological horror, as he produces a film which mixed audiences when first released, crafting a confusing feature following a woman’s life being thrown into disarray when a new couple arrive at her door, a narrative that quickly becomes convoluted and requires multiple viewings to completely grasp.

His most recent feature, 2022’s The Whale, based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name, begins as a drama of a man trying to reconnect with his daughter, but the final days of his life begin to turn it into something more surreal and shocking. Saying then, that the director’s newest release, 2025’s Caught Stealing, sticks out from his filmography is an understatement. In a film which plays out with so much energy as a hybrid between a dark comedy and a thriller, the film subverts the director’s typical work in favour of resembling something between a Martin Scorsese film or a film by the Coen brothers.

Based on the film’s screenwriter’s novel of the same name, which is the first of a trilogy focused on protagonist Henry Thompson, followed by Six Bad Things and A Dangerous Man, Caught Stealing follows a former baseball player who unwittingly becomes involved in the seedy underbelly of New York. After looking after his next-door neighbour’s cat, Austin Butler’s Henry Thompson must fend for his life when being hunted by various gangs and escape from his own trauma.

The Coen Brothers are most well-known for their crime-comedy features, which bring together many characters with eccentric personalities, with films like 1996’s Fargo or 2000’s O Brother, Where Art Thou, falling into this category. These features seem to be a big point of inspiration for Caught Stealing, alongside Scorsese’s dark comedy After Hours. The 1985 cult classic stood apart from Scorsese’s filmography as a hilarious film featuring one man’s pursuit of trying to get home across New York after a date goes array, his night only getting worse as he meets various peculiar characters. You could also even say that Caught Stealing is inspired by the works of Quentin Tarantino, who makes the use of lengthy dialogue exchanges between characters, whose personalities are usually routed in what popular culture they consume, namely in features like 1994’s Pulp Fiction, 2003 and 2004’s Kill Bill: Volume I and Volume II and 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. That is not that Caught Stealing is derivative however, its clearly Aronofsky trying something different, and it completely works. There is enough personality behind the camera that gives the film a feel that resembles these other director’s features, but also still feels like an Aronofsky feature.

Austin Butler has been having a wonderful couple of years after his breakthrough performance in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis in 2022, the former Nickelodeon and Disney Channel star has been working frequently, appearing in features like Dune: Part Two and this year’s Eddington. Caught Stealing is the first time since Elvis that the actor has led a cast of this size, and he handles that perfectly, he shines on screen as close to the perfect leading man as possible. Paired with flashbacks that show the darker moments of the film’s narrative and the personal pain that protagonist Henry Thompson must go through, Butler breathes a sense of life into a pained character who is designed to be the ultimate underdog. He is designed to be relatable, the entire narrative taking place across a couple of days, clearly inspired by the small period of events from After Hours, and Butler matches that velocity of events with a high-energy performance.

His performance holds tight a ship of various other fun performances that populate the film, with different amounts of importance and screen-time. Zoe Kravitz plays the romantic lead, and shares undeniable chemistry with Butler, and a central twist in the narrative leaves her one of the most memorable characters. Matt Smith, who plays Russ Binder, Thompsons’ next-door neighbour, is in very little of the film but is easily one of the highlights for the comedic side of the film. The actor, who is mostly known for being one of the various Doctors on BBC series Doctor Who, is easily playing against type here as a punk-rock criminal who’s the true driver of the plot. Regina King is memorable as Detective Elise Roman, and Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber deliver two of the most chilling performances of the 2025 film season. Both can be funny and terrifying at the same time, the movie humanising and dehumanising them at the same time, matching the unpredictability that the movie is striving for in its narrative.

The film works best when it is keeping true to its crime thriller routes, delivering a central narrative with so many twists and turns that it is hard to see coming, and a narrative that feels completely full-circle and earned in the end. Aronofsky’s direction would not make you feel that he is out of his comfort zone, he’s directing this film with so much energy and passion that sets it apart from his more contained drama directions. It still has that grim and gritty dark colour palette but paired with a fast-cutting edit by Andrew Weisblum, gives the film a fast-paced rhythm that you don’t see much anymore in mainstream Hollywood features. The film’s score, written by Rob Simonsen and recorded by British post-punk band Idles, gives the film a rebel feels, a rocky pulp to it that keeps it moving and keeps the excellent chase sequences fun and riveting. If director Darren Aronofsky was attempting to make his own take on a Coen Brothers film, he has exceeded in making it seem very much his own feature, and certainly on par with some of their works