Running from mobsters with a cat in New York

If you like cats, pre-Twin Towers New York in the 1990s, brutal but historically justified violence, and eccentric, ruthless ethnic criminals, then Darren Aronofsky's new film, Caught Stealing , is perfect for you. Set in 1998, the year Aronofsky directed his first feature film, Pi , and with his hero, Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), living in a seedy Upper East Side apartment, Caught Stealing is, as the director himself says—and we confirm—his "love letter" to the city as it was then (albeit a letter splattered with blood and burned by gunpowder). And also his best film since Black Swan (2010).

[Watch the trailer for “Caught Stealing”:]

Based on the book of the same name by Charlie Huston, who also wrote the screenplay, Caught Stealing is reminiscent of Elmore Leonard's detective stories, Quentin Tarantino's action universe, and deeply New York films like Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985), Spike Lee's Smugglers (1995), or the Safdie brothers' Good Time (2017), but it has its own personality and narrative legs to stand on its own. And it's set in a New York of dirty streets, rough people, rent-controlled buildings, and neighborhood bars, aggressive and "tough," where the Russian mafia (among others) was replacing the Italian mafia, straight out of the films and television series filmed there in the 1990s, and a character as important and vivid as the real-life ones, or Bud the cat.

Austin Butler's Hank works in a bar, is a baseball fanatic (he could have been a star if he hadn't been in a car accident as a teenager that left him with a serious knee injury and a friend and teammate dead on his conscience), drinks too much, has a paramedic girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz), and a late-life English punk neighbor, Murray (Matt Smith), who asks him to look after his cat, Bud, while he goes to England on an emergency basis because his father is seriously ill. As soon as Hank realizes it, he's beaten up and sent to the hospital by two Russian thugs, one big and the other small, who are looking for Murray and believe he's entrusted Hank with something very important that concerns his boss, a Latino who wears tacky clothes and likes to show off a large silver pistol.

[See an interview with Austin Butler and Darren Aronofsky:]

Despite complaining to the police and meeting Detective Roman (Regina King), a tough-as-nails woman raised in a city housing project, who cautioned him and gave him some advice, the innocent and confused Hank ends up being persecuted and in constant danger, always with his cat Bud in his lap, not only by two Russian grunts and their mastermind, but also by two Orthodox Jewish brothers (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio) who adore their mother, spend their time lamenting the sad state of the world and humanity, kill as quickly as they breathe, and have an arsenal in their car worthy of a special military force. And as if this weren't enough, Hank also discovers that police corruption in the city is not a cliché from movies and TV shows of the sort.

[See a sequence from the film explained:]

The film abounds in unsightly criminals, concrete-headed, quick-fisted, and trigger-happy, but no one steals anything from anyone. The title alludes to a baseball ruse that will escape those unfamiliar with the sport, and serves as a correlative to the situation Hank finds himself in. This doesn't in any way prevent us from enjoying this urban thriller , streaked with dark humor (and with two or three spot-on cat jokes), swift, intense, and kinetic, yet without Aronofsky's direction failing in gratuitous and exhibitionist visual and audio frenzy, or in an overabundance of surprises and plot twists, and which tells what it has to tell in just over an hour and a half.

And if anyone doubts that, along with New York, Bud the cat is one of the film's stars, just look at the final credits for Caught Stealing . Tonic, the feline who "plays" him, had no fewer than six human assistants, and just as many four-legged "doubles." Neither Darren Aronofsky nor Austin Butler enjoyed as much attention. As the Americans say, "It's the cat's meow!"