Baseball fans will see the pun straight away; I had to look it up. The non-batting runner, having only made it a certain way around the field, gets tagged out by a fielder trying to “steal”, or sneak up, on a base from the one behind. As far as the non-metaphorical meaning goes, no one in this movie is actually apprehended in the act of theft. But in a world where home runs are unavailable to most, the idea of cheekily trying for covert advantage and survival through quick wits is clear.
Charlie Huston’s violent crime novel of the same name from 2004 has been adapted for the screen by the author, and Darren Aronofsky directs with gleeful energy, flair and a dark humour that straddles the mischief/malice borderline. Incredible to think that his last film was the solemn and inertly sententious body-image drama The Whale. This has more of the confrontational extravagance and energy of his earlier work; it’s not as purely deranged as Aronofsky’s meltdown film Mother!, although, speaking of mothers, there is no doubt who the hero of this film considers to be his best friend.
Austin Butler plays Hank, a former baseball star and booze-addicted bartender in New York whose disastrous exit from the sport – and from his own bright future – is progressively disclosed in nightmare flashbacks. The only good thing in his life is his smart, beautiful girlfriend Yvonne, played by Zoë Kravitz, a paramedic whose professional skills come in useful. When Hank good-naturedly agrees to look after a cat belonging to his dodgy British friend Russ (a very broad, mohawk-sporting performance from Matt Smith), poor Hank winds up getting savagely beaten by some scary Russians to whom Russ owes a great deal of money.
The assault has serious consequences, not least Hank’s encounter with two other villains: a pair of Hassidic guys (played by Vincent D’Onofrio and Liev Schreiber). Their kindly mother Bubbe, played by Carol Kane, sagely tells Hank not to show his teeth if he isn’t going to bite.
Most importantly, Hank comes into contact with a coolly self-possessed New York police officer, played by Regina King, who is airily insensitive about what Hank is going through, but perceptive about him in ways that no other character really is. When talking to (or interrogating) Hank, she asks if he played baseball; Hank coldly admits to playing only at high school level, and this cop instantly senses the lie, the symptom of self-harming pride and grief on which he is challenged by no one else in his life, but can’t work out if it means something more.
The late-90s setting is signalled by Smash Mouth’s Walkin’ on the Sun on the jukebox, Jerry Springer on the TV, a landline answering machine and characters resentfully lending people their flip-top mobile phones and telling them not to “use up my minutes”. In fact, the story itself perhaps comes from an era of Elmore Leonard, Ed Bunker and Quentin Tarantino; the shocks and twists and jolts are nasty and unexpected, and the stunts and car crashes are dished up in a chaotic swirl.
I was disconcerted, however, when Butler’s character, a sweet-natured guy for whom we’re supposed to be rooting, seems to get over one particular horror with relative ease: I couldn’t quite decide if this was a drawback in his performance or something diluting the black comedy. Either way, Caught Stealing is a very enjoyable spectacle. At one stage, Hank hits a few balls and instantly a crowd of people gather round, awed – and an old-timer tells him he has “one hell of a swing”. The film has it too.
• Caught Stealing is out on 28 August in Australia, and on 29 August in the US and UK.
