Caught Stealing

Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz and Bad Bunny star in Caught Stealing, the new grungy, throwback film from Darren Aronofsky. Butler plays Hank, a sad sack bartender at a sticky East Village dive bar in the 1990s. When his British punk neighbor Russ, played by Matt Smith, asks him to cat sit, Hank finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. His life comes apart as the criminal underworld becomes convinced he knows where a huge cache of stolen cash can be found. Will Hank fight back? Can he? Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at https://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture/letterboxd.com/nprpopculture http://letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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  In the film Caught Stealing, Austin Butler is a sad sack bartender. Just by agreeing to catsit for his neighbor, he gets dragged into a world of grisly violence as competing criminal factions threaten his life and his loved ones as they search for a huge wad of cash that they are wrongly convinced he is hiding. It's a throwback film, for whatever that's worth. It's the kind of film they don't make anymore. I think Hitchcock's The Wrong Man meets Reservoir Dogs, and then throw in a great cast. Zoe Kravitz, Matt Bunny, Regina King, Liam Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Matt Smith. I'm Glen Weldon, this is NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, and we're talking about Caught Stealing.

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• 2:26Speaker 01

  Joining me today is journalist and host of the podcast Black Queer, Ken and Travell Anderson. Hey Travell.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Hello, hello.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Hello. And also joining us today is podcast producer and film and culture critic Kate Young. Welcome back Kate.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Hi.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  I am so curious what you thought of this film. Let's get into it. In Caught Stealing, Austin Butler is Hank, a bartender at an East Village dive bar in the 1990s. His girlfriend Yvonne is an EMT. She's played by Zoe Kravitz. When his British punk neighbor Russ, played by Matt Smith, asks him to catsit, Hank finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets brutally beaten up by a bunch of criminals led by Bad Bunny. When he turns to the cops for help, a sympathetic detective, played by Regina King, informs him that he's become entangled in a war between various crime families, including one that includes two Orthodox Jewish brothers, played by Vincent D'Onofrio and Liev Schreiber. Hank's life comes apart as the criminal underworld becomes convinced that he knows where a huge cache

• 3:22Speaker 01

  of stolen cash can be found. Will Hank fight back? Can Hank fight back? It's directed by Darren Aronofsky, who's made great films like Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan, but who most recently made a very, very terrible film called The Whale. Which one of them showed up for Caught Stealing? We're gonna find out. Kate, what'd you think?

• 3:46Speaker 04

  I mean, did I like this film? I did not like this film.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 3:55Speaker 04

  I enjoyed the experience of watching this film. I mostly had a good time. I am fond of a good cross-section of this cast, so it was fun to, you know, spend some time with them. But I'm not really sure what I was expecting from Aronofsky. I wanted to do Crimes Over the Whale, so I think that on that bit alone, this is a significant improvement. But there are a lot of points, I think, like bullets that he kind of checks off as he goes, and I don't know that they all fit. I think the individual pieces mostly work. I have some other quibbles, but I mean, we'll get into those later.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, we will. I think in many ways, what's most interesting about this film is that it's a Darren Aronofsky film, if that makes sense. We'll talk about it. But Travell, I glean.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  From the giggle that you're a little less sold on this film.

• 4:48Speaker 03

  You know, so you one thing interesting, I thought you said, Glenn, is that this is the kind of movie they don't make anymore. Right? For me, it was the kind of movie, you know how back of the day, you used to just scroll through the cable box to find something on TV when you couldn't, you couldn't self-select, you know? And so it reminds me of just flipping through the channels and then you stumble on something and you're like, yeah, sure.

• 5:17Speaker 04

  I call this Sunday afternoon movies.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 5:20Speaker 03

  You enjoy it, you watch it, and then at the end of it, you're like, huh, okay. And then you just go on about your life. Like, it doesn't stick to you in any real way. And, you know, maybe movies don't need to stick to people all the time.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  But it was something that I was just like, huh, okay, you had these people doing these roles. Interesting.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  You know, before we started recording, we kind of gave like brief heads up and I was like, oh, I'm more positive on this film than either of these two folks are. I don't know if that's true now. I think from the tone you both are giving me, I'm kind of there. I found this film very simplistic, but satisfying. And I think that is because that's exactly what it's engineered to be. You can feel every single screenwriting 101, tenant maxim, cliche, let's just call them what they are, cliche, just the ways to get an audience on your protagonist's side, a way to win them over and make them care about your hero, including but not limited to save the cat, which comes into play here.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  But they just keep piling up in a way that I found kind of hilariously obvious and kind of artless. I mean, they're going full Robert McKee at this thing. And I'm like, okay, this is what we're doing. All right. I kind of respect that it never tries to hide the fact that it's pushing your buttons. I mean, I don't think, I would never call this film stylish or innovative in any way. But it is what those screenwriting cliches exist for it to be, which is effective for me. I mean, you get on the roller coaster, you start going up that first incline. You hear the gears kind of chunk into place. Tragic backstory. Chunk, save the cat, chunk. Something in Hank's past has to be confronted, embraced, addressed. If the film's going to allow him to stop suffering.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Kachunk. I mean, it's very Old Testament, this film, right? Very Book of Job. We even get the kachunk of, you can't pull that trigger, you're not a killer, which. It is the year of our Lord, 2025. We cannot still be doing, cinema is over 100 years old.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  But we are.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  But we are in this film, Trevell, exactly. But as things got worse and worse for Hank, I found myself just kind of shrugging. Like, okay, this is it. And Trevell, you're right, the second you leave this theater, this movie just dissipates. But when I was in that van or SUV or whatever, riding with Schreiber and Donofrio. I was along for that ride.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  You know, this is the beauty of like going to the movie theater to watch a movie, right? You have to be on the ride. You know, I mean, you could leave if you want to, but you kind of have to be on the ride. I kind of felt myself wanting to be let off personally. Because to your point about these, you know, age old tropes that we see here. After the first one or two fall into place. I think if you're used to watching these kinds of movies, then you can kind of peg some of the others that are going to come, right?

• 8:28Speaker 04

  Extremely predictable.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  For me, it made it difficult to watch. Like, I was along for the ride and then I was also like side eyeing everything. I was like, where's the next trope coming from? Because I feel it just around the corner.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  I think in addition to the fact that the movie's so tropey, by about the halfway point, like, we're just getting a hat in a hat. It's the same stuff over and over and over again. And it really, it made me think of the way that we talk about music being something to solve as opposed to something to enjoy. Like, by the time we'd gotten there, I'm just sitting there being like, yep, call that. Yep, call that. I knew that's gonna happen. Call that. There was no surprise really anymore. And I do think that like, the performances are good enough to kind of make the runtime. Well, not quite worth it. That's a whole other issue, but to make it so that I could at least enjoy myself while I was there. I don't know that this is a movie that I would recommend

• 9:24Speaker 04

  to people. It is not the crime against humanity that The Whale is, but it is also like honestly, even on a Sunday afternoon, I don't know that I would recommend to watch this. It's just, it's so artless.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. You mentioned the cast, which is a saving grace this film has. Let's talk about that. Griffin Dunn is in this film as Paul, the owner of the bar that Hank works in. He's in it because he's Griffin Dunn and he's great. He's also in it because it's a shout out to After Hours, a film that this is definitely drafting off of. Regina King is in this movie playing a badass. What's going to be wrong with that? Roger Ebert used to say if Harry Dean Stanton or Emmett Walsh is in a movie, it can't be a bad movie. I was going to update that with Regina King. Then I went to her IMDb page and, you know, she's, she's got a long career. Let's just put it that way. She's been around a lot. So I'm not going to say that because I'm not going to be out here in these streets defending Daddy Daycare, but she's always fun. Schreiber, D'Onofrio, Carol Kane is in this. They're having a ball.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Travell, did you have a ball with them at least?

• 10:24Speaker 03

  I mean, I think the cast is the reason why I was like excited to check it out. You know Regina King can do no wrong in my book, even in this movie, for the record. She can do no wrong. Now, when I am recapping her brilliance on screen, will I mention caught stealing? Probably not. You know, but even Regina King has to, you know, fill in the roles between the major, you know, career defining ones as well, right? But there are so many names that I think is going to pull people in, but I personally was let down.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  You know, you've got Zoe Kravitz, you've got Regina King, you've got Lee Schreiber. What are we doing here? And this is kind of what we get as the result.

• 11:12Speaker 04

  I think one of the biggest issues I had with this film is that it's just too long. I'm not against a particular runtime, but like you feel every single minute of this movie to the point that like, I don't even remember what the plot point was. But I was like, oh, right. We must be in like act three and I was in my watch. We were an hour in. And it kept happening. Like, I think that the pace of this movie is really, really off. It doesn't make sense. There are like three different endings. I really wanted to like this. I am a huge Austin Butler fan. I was rooting for him after Elvis. Like, I loved him in Dune. Like, I do think that this is a really good role for him. I think is the first thing. But this movie is not structured in such a way that it allows any of the people in this film to do any of their best work.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  They kind of can't. And I don't know that that is their fault. I think the one thing that I was really, really frustrated with is the way that he uses the black female characters.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Right.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  And we don't necessarily need to get into that, but I think that was the biggest black mark for me. Mostly because it's the kind of thing that is very easily avoided if you pay attention.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  It's actually quite disappointing to see yet another trope, right? The way all the folks of color, you know, but particularly the black women are used in this narrative. Definitely leaves you with a sour taste, you know, if you come from a particular kind of intersection.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Right. This is an Aronofsky film. Now, I think it's safe to say that Aronofsky's films historically are tough to sit through. He tests audiences. He doesn't go for crowd pleasing. That's not his thing. But this film has such a simple, pulpy formula. He makes the Hank character go through such crap that he's playing with fire. Because when you manipulate an audience's emotions to the extent that he does here, we all know, we've seen movies before, Hank has to get something, like a moment. He doesn't have to have like a big Rambo retribution, but there has to be a moment of catharsis and it needs to land. If you are torturing your protagonist to the extent that he does here, and by extension, torturing us, and you don't give us that moment of catharsis, we're going to come after you with torches and pitchforks, right?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Unless you're going arthouse, I guess, right? Unless you're doing Requiem for a Dream, where the bleakness is the point, or you're doing like. Michael Hennick of Funny Games, where your point is, you know, let's indict the audience and their delight of violence, blah, blah, moralistic BS. That's not this. This film, I think, is aimed squarely at the Cineplex, not the art house. I think there is plenty of moralistic BS in this film, all that Book of Job stuff, but it is in service to delivering that satisfaction at the end, not hand wringing at the nature of violence. I gotta respect it for that. I, I don't think it makes it a particularly interesting movie. I think it makes it a fascinating movie from Darren Aronofsky, who does not do that.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think that was probably the thing that I was most surprised about. It did not feel tonally like something I would expect from him.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  And in returning to like the way that the rhythm of this film is off, the tone of this film is odd. It just goes wildly from one end to the other because a lot of this movie is really funny.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Right? And that's not something that you necessarily think is coming after the first, you know, inciting incident happens. Like, there is so much punching in this movie. And I'm not against that. I think for the most part, it actually makes sense. But for me, as someone who like, does not like to see people get beat up, like, I had to cover my eyes a few times. People really get beat up.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Yep. I'm not too into the fighting and the gore and all of that either, Kay. I definitely, you know, covered my eyes or closed my eyes a couple of times as well. And yet, that kind of stuff didn't keep me, you know? Like, I kept seeing all of that and then just kind of feeling like, okay, is the movie over yet? Because, like you mentioned earlier, there are a number of points that feel like endings, and yet we keep going. And maybe that gets to your point, Glenn, about kind of just the energy and the style that perhaps Darren was trying to convey with this film compared to some of his others and the pacing with some of the others.

• 15:19Speaker 03

  But it didn't quite, you know, connect for me.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  We've used the word artless a couple of times in this podcast so far. I mean, that's what it feels like. It just feels like, let's get them to point B as quickly and as efficiently as possible, which means we're sacrificing things like nuance. And depth. Okay, so I have a weird question to ask you both about the production design of this film. I spent a lot of time in New York in the 90s. That is not a brag. I could have made better choices. But, you know, in and around the Lower East Side and the East Village and St. Mark's Place, I have been to those dive bars with the same black walls covered in, you know, the white graffiti and the band stickers that are all kind of yellow because they're nicotine stained. And you walk in and you're hit with stale beer and broken toilets.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  And there's a shot of him in this film, walking past a Kim's video. And y'all, I felt a physical, like a pang of loss, a physical pang, like someone had poked me in the stomach. Now, y'all are young. And when you look at the New York of this movie, does the fact that they went the extra mile for some of that authenticity, does that register with you in any way? Or do you look at this film and you just see it like, oh, this is a period piece?

• 16:28Speaker 04

  I mean, I would have been eight at the time of this film.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  So what I was trying to allude to without saying it outright, but thank you.

• 16:35Speaker 04

  I can't really speak to the authenticity of it. I will say that there's a point in which Zoe Kravitz's character calls a cab. And I was like, why is she calling a cab? And I'm like, right, no, it's 998.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  And the payphones, I was like, oh, yeah, payphones. I could tell when he picked up a payphone. I knew that the earpiece was going to be greasy with somebody else's skin. I knew that the bar in Paul's Bar was sticky. I could feel Paul's Bar. I could smell Paul's Bar. I thought the details were right. That's what I'll say. I thought we were gonna fight over this movie, but I think we kind of were on the same page at the end. I think we all arrived at exactly the same place. Well, tell us what you think, though, about Caught Stealing. You can do that on Letterboxd or on Facebook if you're one of my angrier aunts and uncles. We'll have links in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Kate Young, Treville Anderson, thank you so much for being here.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Janaye Morris, and Mike Katzif, and edited by our showrunner Jessica Riede. And Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.

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