You got it wrong in the first scene. Seriously. The freaking FIRST scene. This film opens with something wrong. The camera shows home plate. A baseball game is being played. The slow pan out finds batter, catcher, ump, and the sounds of a runner breaking from 3rd base. The runner beats the pitch and scores the game-winning run (immediate over-the-top celebration/dejection follow), suggesting the movie theme of baseball, which isn’t played in the movie after this scene. It’s a film about a loser in over his head with gangsters. And the runner did not get Caught Stealing.
That’s not what’s wrong.
What is wrong is the fact that the runner and batter are wearing gray. i.e. They are the road team. The pitcher, catcher, and fielders are in white; they are the home team. Now tell me, baseball fan: when is the last time a baseball game ended with the road team scoring a run? That isn’t how baseball works. And in a film with some baseball themes and a baseball title and a lead who is a former baseball phenom washout? Well, you’d think you could at least get the baseball right.
Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) is haunted by his past. Once a first-round baseball prospect, he drove his car into a pole right before draft week. The crash ended his baseball career and took the life of his best friend to boot. A decade later, he’s a bartender in New York. Just a few more baseball points: 1) If one injured knee takes you from being a first-round draftee to undraftable … you were not a first-round draft prospect to begin with. 2) Any young phenom who can’t avoid a pole with three seconds lead time does not have major league tools. Yes, I will die on this hill. Movie, your case is unconvincing.
Despite the steady paying gig, Hank is also a loser and a bit of an alcoholic. And yet, he’s managed to attract Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz). Unfortunately, she’s irrelevant. What is relevant is the punk in the apartment next door (Matt Smith). Russ (Smith) goes away, leaving Hank a cat and dealings with Russian mobsters. Out of little more than neighborly curiosity, Hank loses a kidney to the Russian thugs, and they still don’t have what they want.
This film would be a lot more palatable if I liked Hank … or Detective Roman (Regina King) … or any of the flurry of gangsters that show up. Yes, I suppose at that point, I could be tickled pink when Carol Kane finds my screen. Carol Kane (?!) in a mob film (!?!?). And does her scene include a “Have fun storming the castle, boys!” moment? IT DOES! Yes, I could like this film, if it weren’t for all the things I hated about it.
Caught Stealing is a penance film. This is clear early on – but the atonement theme doesn’t really work because Hank isn’t out to do good; he simply gets lost
in a “wrong place/wrong time” scenario that dominates all of his sequential actions and, more importantly, he isn’t really into atonement. The choices he makes in the first 75% of film are all about self-preservation; when he finally acts with a disregard for his own life, it’s much more about revenge than atonement. And, yes, there is not only collateral damage, but torture along the way; neither of these things sit well with me.
The film ended far better than it played, so I’m happy to report that I felt much better after Act III than I did after Acts I and II, but that isn’t enough, and I can’t help thinking Darren Aronofsky should know better. Well then again, he made The Fountain.
The once was a washed-out baller
Criminals made this guy holler
His need to atone
Is what his face shown
But only revenge made this loser stand taller
Rated R, 107 Minutes
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Writer: Charlie Huston
Genre: Atonement
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who don’t mind collateral damage
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The rest of us
