Pop Culture Happy Hour - Caught Stealing

Episode Date: September 2, 2025

Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz and Bad Bunny star in Caught Stealing, the new grungy, throwback film from Darren Aronofsky. Butler plays Hank, a sad sack bartender at a sticky East Village dive bar in the 1990s. When his British punk neighbor Russ, played by Matt Smith, asks him to cat sit, Hank finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. His life comes apart as the criminal underworld becomes convinced he knows where a huge cache of stolen cash can be found. Will Hank fight back? Can he? Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

In the film Caught Stealing, Austin Butler is a sad sack bartender. Just by agreeing to catsit for his neighbor, he gets dragged into a world of grizzly violence, as competing criminal factions threaten his life and his loved ones as they search for a huge wad of cash that they are wrongly convinced he is hiding. It's a throwback film for whatever that's worth. It's the kind of film they don't make anymore. I think Hitchcock's the wrong man meets Reservoir Dogs and then throw in a great cast. Zoe Kravitz, Bad Bunny, Regina King, Leah of Schreiber, Vincent O'O. And Afrio and Matt Smith.

I'm Glenn Weldon. This is NPR's pop culture happy hour, and we're talking about caught stealing. Joining me today is journalist and host of the podcast Black Queer. Ken and Trevelle Anderson. Hey, Treville. Hello, hello. Hello. And also joining us today is podcast producer and film and culture critic Kate Young. Welcome back, Kate.

Hi. I am so curious what you thought of this film. Let's get into it. In caught stealing, Austin Butler is Hank, a bartender at an East Village dive bar in the 1990s. His girlfriend Devon is an EMT. She's played by Zoe Krabbits. When his British punk neighbor Russ, played by Matt Smith, asks him to cats it, Hank finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and gets brutally beaten up by a bunch of criminals, led by Bad Bunny. When he turns to the cops for help, a sympathetic detective, played by Regina King, informs him that he's become entangled in a war between various crime families,

including one that includes two Orthodox Jewish brothers, played by Vincent Donofrio and Leav Schreiber, Hank's life comes apart as the criminal underworld becomes convinced that he knows where a huge cash of stolen cash can be found. Will Hank Fight Back? Can Hank Fight Back? It's directed by Darren Aronofsky, who's made great films like Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and Black Swan, but who most recently made a very, very terrible film called The Whale. Which one of them showed up for caught stealing? We're going to find out. Kate, what did you think? I mean, did I like this film?

I didn't not like this film. Okay. I enjoyed the experience of watching this film. I mostly had a good time. I am fond of a good cross-section of this cast, so it was fun to, you know, spend some time with them. But I'm not really sure what I was expecting from Aronoski. I wanted to do crimes over the whale,

So I think that on that bit alone, this is a significant improvement. But there are a lot of points, I think, like bullets, that he kind of checks off as he goes. And I don't know that they all fit. I think the individual pieces mostly work. I have some other quibbles, but, I mean, we'll get into those later. Yeah, we will. I think in many ways, what's most interesting about this film is that it's a Darren Arnowski film. If that makes sense, we'll talk about it.

But Trevelle, I glean from the giggle. that you're a little less sold on this film. You know, so one thing interesting I thought you said, Glenn, is that this is the kind of movie they don't make anymore, right? For me, it was the kind of movie. You know how back of the day you used to just scroll through the cable box to find something on TV when you couldn't self-select, you know? And so it reminds me of just flipping through the channels

and then you stumble on something and you're like, Yeah, sure. I call this Sunday afternoon movies. Yeah. Absolutely. You enjoy it. You watch it. And then at the end of it, you're like, huh, okay.

And then you just go on about your life. Like, it doesn't stick to you in any real way. And, you know, maybe movies don't need to stick to people all the time. But it was something that I was just like, huh, okay, you had these. people doing these roles. Interesting. You know, before we started recording, we kind of gave brief heads up. And I was like, oh, I'm more positive one in this film than either of these two folks are. I don't know if that's true now. I think from the tone you both are given me, I'm kind of there. I found this film very simplistic, but satisfying. And I think that is because

that's exactly what it's engineered to be. You can feel every single screenwriting 101 tenant, Maxim, cliche, let's just call what they are, cliche. Just the ways to get an audience on your protagonist's side, a way to win them over and make them care about your hero, including but not limited to Save the Cat, which comes into play here. But they just keep piling up in a way that I found kind of hilariously obvious and kind of artless. I mean, they're going full Robert McKee at this thing. And I'm like, okay, this is what we're doing. All right. I kind of respect that it never tries to hide the fact that it's pushing your buttons.

I mean, I don't think I would never call this film stylish or innovative in any way. But it is what those screenwriting cliches exist for it to be, which is effective for me. I mean, you get on the roller coaster, you start going up that first incline, you hear the gears kind of chunk into place. Tragic backstory. Chunk. Save the cat. Chunk. Something in Hank's past has to be confronted, embraced, addressed.

if the film's going to allow him to stop suffering, Kachunk. I mean, it's very old testament, this film, right? Very Book of Job. We even get the kuchunk of, you can't pull that trigger, you're not a killer, which it is the year of our Lord 2025.

We cannot still be doing. Cinema is over 100 years old. But we are. But we are in this film, Trey Bell, exactly. But as things got worse and worse for Hank, I found myself just kind of shrugging. Like, okay, this is it. And Trey Bell,

You're right. The second you leave this theater, this movie just dissipates. But when I was in that van or SUV or whatever, riding with Schreiber and Donofrio, I was along for that ride. You know, this is the beauty of like going to the movie theater to watch a movie, right? You have to be on the ride. You know, I mean, you could leave if you want to, but you kind of have to be on the ride. I kind of found myself wanting to be let off personally. Because to your point about these, you know, age-old tropes that we see here, after the first one or two fall into place, I think if you're used to watching these kinds of movies, then you can kind of peg some of the others that are going to come, right? Extremely predictable. For me, it made it difficult to watch. Like, I was along for the ride and then I was also like side-eyeing everything. I was like, where's the next trope coming from? Because I feel it just around the corner.

I think in addition to the fact that the movie's so tropey, by about the halfway point, like, we're just getting a hat and a hat. It's the same stuff over and over and over again. And it really made me think of the way that we talk about music being something to solve, as opposed to something to enjoy. Like, by the time we'd gotten there, I'm just sitting there being like, yep, call that. Yep, call that. I knew that's going to happen.

Call that. there was no surprise really anymore. And I do think that like the performances are good enough to kind of make the runtime, well, not quite worth it. That's a whole other issue. But to make it so that I could at least enjoy myself while I was there, I don't know that this is a movie that I would recommend to people. It is not the crime against humanity that the whale is. But it is also like honestly, even on a Sunday afternoon, I don't know that I would recommend to watch this. It's just, it's so art-led. Yeah. You mentioned the cast, which is a saving grace this film has. Let's talk about that. Griffin Dunn is in this film as Paul, the owner of the bar that Hank works in. He's in it because he's Griffin Dunn and he's great. He's also in it because it's a shout out to after hours, a film that this is definitely drafting off of. Regina King is in this movie. What's going to be wrong with that? Roger Ebert used to say if Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmett Walsh is in a movie. It can't be a bad movie. I was going to update that with Regina King. Then I went to her. IMDB page and you know she's she's got a long career let's just put it that way she's been around a lot so i'm not gonna say that because i'm not going to be out here in these streets defending daddy daycare but she's always fun schreiber denofrio carol kane is in this they're having a ball treville did you have a ball with them at least i mean i think the cast is the reason why i was like excited to check it out you know regina king can do no wrong in my book even in this movie for the record she can do no wrong

Now, when I am recapping her brilliance on screen, will I mention caught stealing? Probably not. You know? But even Regina King has to, you know, fill in the roles between the major, you know, career-defining ones as well, right? Right. But there are so many names that I think is going to pull people in. But I personally was let down. Okay. You know, you've got Zoe Kravitz.

You've got Regina King. You've got Leve Schreiber. What are we doing here? And this is kind of what we get as the result. I think one of the biggest issues I had with this one is that it's just too long. I'm not against a particular runtime, but like you feel every single minute of this movie to the point that like, I don't even remember what the plot point was. But I was like, oh, right, we must be in act three. And I was in my watch.

We were an hour in. And it kept happening. Like, I think that the pace of this movie is really, really off. It doesn't make sense. there are like three different endings. I really wanted to like this. I am a huge, Alasthan.

I was rooting for him after Elvis. Like, I loved him in Dune. Like, I do think that this is a really good role for him, that I think is the first thing. But this movie is not structured in such a way that it allows any of the people in this film to do any of their best work. They kind of can't.

And I don't know that that is their fault. I think the one thing that I was really, really frustrated with, is the way that he uses the black female characters. Right. And we don't necessarily need to get into that, but I think that was the biggest black mark for me, mostly because it's the kind of thing

that is very easily avoided if you pay attention. It's actually quite disappointing to see yet another trope, right? The way all the folks of color, you know, but particularly the black women, are used in this narrative, definitely leaves you with a sour taste, you know, if you come from a particular. kind of intersection.

Right. This is an Aronowski film. Now, I think it's safe to say that Aronoxi's film historically are tough to sit through. He tests audiences. He doesn't go for crowd-pleasing. That's not his thing.

But this film has such a simple, pulpy formula. He makes the Hank character go through such crap that he's playing with fire because when you manipulate an audience's emotions to the extent that he does here, we all know, we've seen movies before.

Hank has to get something, like a moment. He doesn't have to have like a big Rambo retribution, but there has to be a moment of catharsis and it needs to land. If you are torturing your protagonist to the extent that he does here,

and by extension torturing us, and you don't give us that moment of catharsis, we're going to come after you with torches and pitchforks, right? Unless you're going art house, I guess, right? Unless you're doing Requiem for a dream where the bleakness is the point. Or you're doing like Michael Hennec of funny games

where your point is, you know, let's indict the audience in their delight of violence, blah, blah, That's not this. This film, I think, is aimed squarely at the Cineplex, not the art house. I think there is plenty of moralistic BS in this film, all that book of job stuff, but it is in service to delivering that satisfaction at the end, not hand-wringing at the nature of violence. I got to respect it for that. I don't think it makes it a particularly interesting movie. I think it makes it a fascinating movie from Darren Aronovsky, who does not do that. Yeah, I think that was probably the thing that I was most surprised about. It did not feel tonally like something I would expect from him. And in returning to like the way that the rhythm of this film is off, the tone of this film is off. It just goes wildly from one end to the other because a lot of this movie is really funny. Yeah.

Right. And that's not something that you necessarily think is coming after the first, you know, inciting incident happens. Like there is so much punching in this movie. And like, I'm not against that. I think for the most bad it actually makes sense. But for me, as someone who like does not like to see people get beat up, like I had to cover my eyes a few times. People really get beat up. Yep. I'm not too into the fighting and the gore and all of that either, K. I definitely, you know, covered my eyes or closed my eyes a couple times as well.

And yet, that kind of stuff didn't keep me, you know? I kept seeing all of that and then just kind of feeling like, okay, is the movie over yet? Because, like you mentioned earlier, there are a number of points that feel like endings. And yet we keep going. And maybe that gets to your point, Glenn, about kind of just the energy and the style that perhaps Darren was trying to convey with this film compared to some of his others and the pacing with some of the others. But it didn't quite, you know, connect for me. We've used the word art list a couple times in this podcast so far. I mean, that's what it feels like.

It just feels like let's get them to point B as quickly and as efficiently as possible, which means we're sacrificing things like nuance. And depth. Okay, so I have a weird question to ask you both about the production design of this film. I spent a lot of time in New York and the 90s. That is not a brag. I could have made better choices. But, you know, in and around the Lower East Side, in the East Village and St. Mark's Place, I have been to those dive bars with the same black walls covered in, you know, the white graffiti and the band stickers that are all kind of yellow because they're nicotine stained.

And you walk in and you're hit with stale beer and broken teeth. toilets and there's a shot of him in this film walking past a Kim's video. And y'all, I felt a physical, like a pang of loss, a physical pang like someone had poked me in the stomach. Now, y'all are young. And when you look at the New York of this movie, does the fact that they went the extra mile for some of that authenticity, does I register with you in any way? Or do you look at this film and you just see it like, oh, well, this is a period piece? I mean, I would have been eight at the time of this film. This is what I was trying to allude to

without saying it outright, but thank you. So I can't really speak to the authenticity of it. I will say that there's a point in which Zoe Kravitz's character calls a cab, and I was like, why is she calling a cab? And I was like, no, it's 998. And the payphones. I was like, oh, yeah, pay phones.

I could tell when he picked up a payphone. I knew that the earpiece was going to be greasy with somebody else's skin. I knew that the box. and Paul's Bar was sticky. I could feel Paul's Bar. I could smell. Paul's Bar.

I got the details right. That's what I'll say. I thought we were going to fight over this movie, but I think we kind of were in the same page at the end. I think we all arrived at exactly the same place. Tell us what you think, though, about caught stealing. You can do that on letterboxed or on Facebook, if you're one of my angrier aunts and uncles.

We'll have links in our episode description. That brings us to the end of our show. Kate Young, Trayville Anderson. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Jeney Morris, and Mike Katziff,

and edited by our shortrunner, Jessica Reedy. And hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.