{"id":90160,"date":"2025-08-24T19:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T19:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/90160\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T19:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T19:45:07","slug":"austin-butlers-high-energy-new-york-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/90160\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Butler’s High-Energy New York Hustle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThere are two key tests of what makes a movie star. The first is whether the actor in question can carry a movie. That\u2019s something Austin Butler<\/a> does with an easy, laid-back charm in \u201cCaught Stealing<\/a>,\u201d such that none of the characters with whom he shares the screen could be accused of stealing it out from under him. And the second is whether they can open it, which we\u2019ll learn soon enough, when director Darren Aronofsky<\/a>\u2019s scuzzy misfit of a movie \u2014 featuring Butler\u2019s most relatable role yet, despite the degree of violence to which he\u2019s exposed \u2014 hits theaters on Aug. 29.<\/p>\n

\n\tA dramatic gear shift for Aronofsky, \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d stars Butler as Hank Thompson, a New York bartender who watches Giants games, knowing that he really should be out there on the field, pounding baseballs into the stands. He\u2019s still got a hell of a swing, though his knee exploded in a drunk-driving accident 10 years earlier that\u2019s still so fresh in his mind, it gives him nightmares (that\u2019s a smart change from Charlie Huston\u2019s novel, where the injury and the accident occur separately).<\/p>\n

\n\tHuston adapted the book himself \u2014 the first of three featuring the Hank Thompson character \u2014 tailoring Hank\u2019s personality slightly to suit Butler\u2019s ambivalent-golden-boy energy. The character grew up in California, and it shows \u2014 or at least, anyone can tell he\u2019s not from New York, because Hank actually sees the people around him, instead of brushing right past them, the way locals do. Hank not only acknowledges the wino sleeping outside his stoop, but takes a minute to give him money. He lives in a sketchy walk-up on the Lower East Side, where he\u2019s polite to his neighbors \u2026 and even agrees to cat-sit for Russ (Matt Smith), the drug-peddling English punk with the foot-high orange Mohawk who lives next door.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat friendly attitude is either his fatal flaw or his saving grace, depending on how you look at it. When Russ skips town, a colorful assortment of criminal elements descends on his apartment looking for something \u2014 a key, it turns out, but even then, it\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess what it opens. The first couple goons to stop by (Nikita Kukushkin and Yuri Kolokolnikov, looking bald and belligerent) beat Hank up so badly, he awakens in the hospital a few days later missing a kidney. And the bad guys keep on coming, till it\u2019s clear that Hank\u2019s only choice is to help them out or wind up dead.<\/p>\n

\n\tLike Hank, the movie shows an acute interest in other people, which explains why it has such a memorable ensemble \u2014 one that includes his feisty paramedic girlfriend Yvonne (Zo\u00eb Kravitz), a poker-faced police detective (Regina King), his seen-better-days biker boss Paul (Griffin Dunne), the aforementioned pair of Russian mobsters, two exceptionally violent Orthodox brothers (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D\u2019Onofrio) and a wild-card Puerto Rican gangster (an eccentric cameo from Bad Bunny<\/a> that feels like it might have been lifted from a Guy Ritchie movie).<\/p>\n

\n\tAronofsky isn\u2019t as flashy a director as Ritchie \u2014 or at least, he chooses not to be here \u2014 though the unpredictable sequence of encounters between Hank and the various members of the criminal underworld surprises and amuses, \u00e0 la \u201cLock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.\u201d Meanwhile, Dunne\u2019s presence is a dead giveaway as to the kind of movie Aronofsky had in his mind to make. The New York-based director channels Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cAfter Hours,\u201d with longtime cinematographer Matthew Libatique matching that mix of bustle and grit.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCaught Stealing\u201d is spread out over slightly more time, as Hank tries to do whatever it takes to get Russ\u2019 enemies off his back and prevent more innocent people from getting killed in the process. But he\u2019s a normal guy, not some John Wick super-assassin just looking for quiet. Hank coulda been a contender, but now he\u2019s drowning in self-pity, trying to drink away his regrets. Such details might have sounded like clich\u00e9s in a lesser writer\u2019s hands, but Huston weaves them in such that Hank\u2019s crisis doesn\u2019t telegraph the personal redemption that potentially awaits him.<\/p>\n

\n\tRefreshingly enough, Hank\u2019s not one to hold grudges. When he loses a kidney, he doesn\u2019t go looking for payback. Instead, he\u2019s smart enough to avoid the Russians next time they come calling. He\u2019s especially attentive to Russ\u2019 cat, Bud, an ornery Maine coon (played by Tonic, the same cat seen in \u201cPet Sematary\u201d) who bites everyone but Hank \u2014 which says something about this guy\u2019s underlying nature. How often do the protagonists in movies like this take time to call their mothers?<\/p>\n

\n\tHank is no killer, though the movie does treat his athletic ability as an asset. In a Chinatown chase scene, he eases below a truck\u2019s tailgate like he was sliding into home, and later, he wields a baseball bat like a deadly weapon. Releasing the same month as Spike Lee\u2019s \u201cHighest 2 Lowest,\u201d \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d shows a similar appreciation for the city where it\u2019s set, though Aronofsky\u2019s film does more to accentuate the range of cultures and personalities to be found in New York. Over the course of several days, Hank travels to the far corners of the Big Apple, from Flushing Meadows, Queens (where Shea Stadium and the Unisphere feature prominently), to Coney Island and Brighton Beach in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhereas four of Aronofsky\u2019s last five films premiered at the Venice Film Festival, this one opens in theaters the same weekend back home (sneak previewing widely to build word of mouth). \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d might feel like a break from the \u201cPi\u201d director\u2019s intensely subjective character portraits, which range from \u201cThe Wrestler\u201d to \u201cThe Whale,\u201d but in fact, Aronofsky brings us as close to Hank as he has to any of his other characters. For Butler, it\u2019s not as flashy a role as the ones he played in \u201cElvis\u201d or \u201cDune,\u201d and yet, seeing the actor stripped down to his heather gray undies, his stardom is all but undeniable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are two key tests of what makes a movie star. The first is whether the actor in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90161,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[24652,29787,39037,45025,96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-90160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-austin-butler","9":"tag-bad-bunny","10":"tag-caught-stealing","11":"tag-darren-aronofsky","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90160\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}