American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s latest crime-comedy film, Caught Stealing, starring Austin Butler, Matt Smith, and Zoë Kravitz, is set to premiere in Philippine cinemas this coming September 10. The film is Aronofsky’s first since The Whale, the 2022 drama that won Brendan Fraser an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Known for brooding and unsettling dramas like Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, and Mother!, Aronofsky is taking a sharp left turn with his latest project. Caught Stealing trades psychological torment for pulp violence and dark comedy, embracing a style closer to gangster flicks than his usual tone. The film is based on the 2004 novel by Charlie Huston, who also handled the screenplay adaptation.
At the film’s center is Hank Thompson, played by Butler, a washed-up former baseball player turned bartender in downtown New York. His life spirals after his punk rock neighbor Russ, played by Smith, asks him to look after his pet cat. The seemingly harmless favor drags him into the city’s criminal underworld, where he is hunted by a chaotic mix of gangsters, gutter punks, and even rabbis. Butler’s character is left scrambling for survival as the city closes in on him.
With Butler, Smith, and Kravitz leading the cast, Caught Stealing looks set to deliver a mix of grit and spectacle unlike anything else in Aronofsky’s filmography. Huston, who published the book two decades ago, described the project as deeply personal. “I wrote this book way back in 1998, the year the story is set in,” Huston said in a press statement. “There’s a ton of my own lived experience in the story’s main character. When Darren Aronofsky reached out to me 18 years ago to say he was interested in the book, it was super exciting. I loved the idea of Darren taking his visual sensibility and the dynamism of his storytelling and applying it to this story.”’
