The Elvis star’s magnetic screen presence becomes a liability in Darren Aronofsky’s ’90s crime caper that needed a believable loser, not another beautiful enigma
Austin Butler has mastered the art of playing beautiful mysteries – men whose very blankness becomes magnetic. Whether he’s channeling Elvis’s otherworldly charisma, Dune‘s sociopathic Feyd-Rautha, or The Bikeriders‘ impulsive Benny, Butler excels at characters who entrance audiences from a distance. But Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing demands something Butler has never convincingly delivered: an up-close, unglamorous failure. The result is a fascinatingly uncomfortable mismatch that undermines what could have been Aronofsky’s most accessible film in years.
The Wrong Star for the Right Story
Butler plays Hank Thompson, a former baseball prodigy whose dreams died in a high school accident, leaving him to marinate in decade-old bitterness as a Lower East Side bartender. On paper, it’s perfect Aronofsky territory – another broken dreamer nursing wounds in New York’s urban decay. In practice, Butler’s angel face and Hollywood physique make him look like he’s method acting poverty rather than living it.
The fundamental problem isn’t Butler’s age (34) or his looks, though watching him pretend to down Miller High Life for breakfast does strain credibility. The issue is spiritual: Butler moves through 1998 Manhattan like a tourist on an elaborate Airbnb experience rather than someone who’s been drowning in the city’s depths for over a decade. When he tells a cop he’s lived in New York that long, the line lands with jarring disbelief.
Aronofsky’s Identity Crisis
Caught Stealing, adapted by Charlie Huston from his own 2005 novel, suffers from its own identity confusion. Aronofsky can’t decide whether he’s making a gritty noir caper or a character study, and the film’s ramshackle structure reflects this indecision. Sometimes we’re watching Hank navigate violent Russian gangsters; other times we’re meant to care about his emotional paralysis. The tonal whiplash would be manageable if Butler’s performance provided a stable center, but his Hank feels like an empty space where a compelling character should be.
Unlike Aronofsky’s greatest creations – Black Swan‘s obsessive Nina or The Wrestler‘s desperate Randy – Hank isn’t driven by consuming passion. He’s defined by absence, the hollow space left when dreams die. That could be profound in the right hands, but Butler plays absence like someone who’s never experienced genuine defeat.
The Supporting Cast Steals the Show
Ironically, Caught Stealing comes alive whenever Butler steps into the background. Zoë Kravitz brings sultry intelligence to Yvonne, a paramedic who eyes Hank with the skepticism of someone wondering if she’s wasting her time. Regina King commands every scene as a world-weary detective, while George Abud provides grounded humanity as Hank’s exasperated neighbor.
The film’s most inspired casting comes in its villains. Bad Bunny appears as a flamboyant nightclub owner who brandishes pistols like accessories, while Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber steal scenes as Hasidic mobsters who insist on stopping at bubbe’s house for Shabbat dinner mid-crime spree. Carol Kane serving matzo-ball soup to a yarmulke-wearing Butler creates the film’s most surreal and successful moment.
Period Perfect, Protagonist Problem
Aronofsky, a Brooklyn native who wears his New York credentials like armor, nails the Giuliani-era atmosphere with grimy precision. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique captures downtown Manhattan’s comparative 1998 squalor with beautiful ugliness, while period details like Meredith Brooks’s “Bitch” provide authentic texture. Aronofsky’s decision to frame the title over the Twin Towers feels heavy-handed, but the overall period work is impeccable.
The problem is that this lovingly crafted world deserves a protagonist who belongs in it. Butler floats above the authentic grime like he’s afraid of getting his costume dirty.
A Cat Carries More Weight Than the Lead
Perhaps the most damning critique of Butler’s performance is that his feline co-star Bud generates more emotional investment. The well-behaved cat (who only occasionally gets “bite-y”) becomes Hank’s most compelling companion on an odyssey from Chinatown to Coney Island. When the film finds more pathos in the cat’s endangerment than in female characters’ deaths, something has gone seriously wrong with the protagonist hierarchy.
The cat survives, by the way – and that’s not a spoiler because caring about Bud’s fate becomes more pressing than caring about Hank’s.
Wasted Potential in Every Frame
Caught Stealing frustrates because its best elements are so strong. D’Onofrio and Schreiber’s religious gangsters deserve their own spinoff. Kravitz and King bring weight to underwritten roles. Aronofsky’s New York feels lived-in and authentic. But the film keeps rushing toward violent confrontations when its most interesting moments happen in between, during character interactions that reveal the lived experience Butler can’t quite access.
A more confident director might have let these peripheral scenes breathe, allowing the supporting cast to compensate for the lead’s limitations. Instead, Aronofsky seems aware that his protagonist can’t carry extended dramatic weight, so he keeps moving toward the next action beat.
The Verdict: Beautiful Failure
Caught Stealing represents a fascinating misfire – a film where almost every element works except the most crucial one. Butler’s inability to convincingly portray failure undermines a story that depends on believing in his character’s decade-long spiral. He’s too magnetic to be invisible, too polished to be broken, too present to be absent.
The film succeeds as a showcase for character actors and as a love letter to pre-gentrification Manhattan. It fails as a vehicle for its leading man, who remains better suited to playing enigmas than everyman losers. Sometimes the wrong casting choice illuminates everything else that’s right about a film – and sometimes it just makes you wish you were watching a different movie entirely.
Rating: 2.5/5 Stars
Caught Stealing works better as a supporting player showcase than a star vehicle, undermined by casting that prioritizes marquee value over authenticity.
