When I first saw the trailer to Caught Stealing I was immediately interested in seeing the film.
It looked like it was going to be something of dark, edgy, gangster, comedy film, with twists and turns, very much in the vein of Guy Richie's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) movie, which I really enjoyed.
Obviously, I didn't see this in theatres, and am reviewing it now because I've finally caught up with it on Amazon Prime. (As a side note, my local cinema closed down so seeing things in cinemas is a little more of a luxury these days).
I was also interested to see Austin Butler in a staring role post Elvis (2022) because I think he's definitely an actor to watch after that performance.
In Caught Stealing, former rising star baseball player, Hank Thompson (Butler) is unknowingly drawn into a world of late 1990s gangsters, when he, under protest, agrees to look after his dubious punk rocker neighbor, Russ' (Matt Smith) cat, while he rushes off to attend a family emergency.
It's a great premise, and the action doesn't take long to heat up with a procession of people looking for Russ, with Hank drawn in simply by being in the right place at the wrong time.
Generally I enjoyed this movie but it didn't deliver quite what I was expecting on the comedy front. It's certainly trying to inject some quirky offbeat humor but the stakes for Hank are just too high and serious to feel like you can laugh at moments that are intended to be funny.
As a quick example, Nikita Kukushkin, who plays really loose unit, Pavel, is clearly intended to be a comedic character but the violence he dishes out is so brutal and intense, it's hard to laugh at him. Though there is one moment with him that lands that made me laugh out loud for a moment.
Which kind of makes it sound like the film is graphically violent, and it is in places, but not really any more so than any other modern thriller, action movie. Pavel, is a bit of a force of nature type character. He's never joking around so the humor is more from the absurdity of his conviction to violence, along with him being unintentional funny.
That aside, I found it very watchable. I didn't know Matt Smith was in this, and didn't actually recognize him right away. Russ is such a departure from the characters Matt tends to play. So that was fun.
The twists and turns you sometimes see coming before they happen but it's fine. There are some minor issues with Hank as a character if you really think about his backstory, that we see played out in flashback dreams. But it won't be a big problem compared to the more recent events of the film, and how that's not really hindering his movements either.
Overall it's a fun film with Austin giving a solid performance. The rest of the cast drift in and out as the story unfolds with everyone doing their part to either support or hinder Hank's journey through a series of very challenging events.
Perhaps it's funnier if you're into semi cartoonish violence, and some very mindlessly unnecessary violence but for me it came across more as a fairly solid small time gangster movie that I did enjoy.
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