After his neighbour (Matt Smith) forces him to look after his cat, Former baseball player Hank (Austin Butler) finds himself the target of said roommates’ various criminal acquaintences…
Far more melancholy than it initially appears, Caught Stealing is ultimately a bit of a damp squib.
On one hand it feels like a throwback to the post-Tarantino comedy-thrillers of the nineties - combining an OTT ensemble of characters and occasional dashes of dark wit, with a dour story of redemption.
Butler is a winning presence but he is stuck in second gear as a character himself stuck on autopilot.
The film is in this weird middle lane - too cartoonish to be real, but too sombre to be fun.
There is also something ugly and uninspired about the storytelling, particularly a questionable death of a character of colour which acts as a catalyst for our hero to change (made more questionable by the way it is hamfistedly paralleled with the death of another character of colour). It just feels like reheated leftovers from other movies.
Butler may yet become a star - he holds the screen, has genuine chemistry with Kravitz, and seems to have a better measure of the duelling tones than the movie does.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
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