Caught Stealing: New York, Crimes, Baseball, and Cat 

Caught Stealing is an electric fever dream for the young bartender Hank Thompson, played by popular actor Austin Butler, who has risen into stardom in recent years. A series of unforeseeable events unfolded in front of him due to a huge amount of cash accidentally falling into his charge. 

Unavoidably for New York, different cultures and groups of people took turns to enter this arena of striving for the money. These characters showcase their various languages, idiosyncratic manners, and unique tactics immediately after their first appearances, asserting strong impressions for the audience. Most of the ethnicities showed up on the screen as organizations of crime: British, Russian, Orthodox Jews, Puerto Rican, and a corrupted Black cop, Roman, played by the awarded actress, Regina King. The busy Chinatown is used as a backdrop in a chasing scene. The backroom for Chinese restaurants, the truck carrying special material, and the Asian woman cursing in her language all contribute to presenting a vibrant community, even only as a part of the background. The rule of no driving on Shabbat (a religious holiday) also impacted the plot. 

The motive of Roman’s corruption is one of the most interesting elements in the film. Before the surprising twist of revealing her collaboration with the gang, she told the story that she grew up in a project building down the road and in a hush environment. It gives an insight into the reason why she desires to depart from the same environment for a remote coastal city with the financial supply that exceeds her salary. 

Another storyline apart from the turbulent money splitting is Hank’s backstory regarding baseball and his injured knee. As it’s revealed later on, he was once a rising-star baseball player who had a bright future but got into a car accident, ending with a vital injury and the death of his close friend. The reference to baseball in the film starts from the technical term ‘caught stealing’ in the title and continues through the whole film without a pause. Even the intimate bond between Hank and his mom is integrated with the baseball culture. As he was recovering from this trauma in these unforeseeable events, the moral of the story is the same old, “Don’t run away from your pain. Face it.” The self-salvation narrative of Hank isn’t too much out of the book and more of a classic quote. 

The film seems to aim at building an exhausting rhythm for Hank’s adventure but an entertaining experience for the audience at the same time. The portrayed violence isn’t too overboard and is rather tame. Only the first violent act can bring up a visceral feeling for me, when Hank was punched in the stomach by the Russian gang and ended up losing a kidney. The first-person view of the headbutt from the ground might be the most brutal frame in the whole film. Compared to the violence, the attractiveness of Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz is a bigger component in the appeal of this film. It also relies on showing the feisty cat to win the audience’s hearts over. Overall, Caught Stealing is way less gritty than other remarkable films in the same genre, like Good Time or Uncut Gems, which all show an unstoppable trainwreck.

You can also check another Incluvie’s take on this film by Nilufer Ozmekik.