Caught Stealing 4K 2025

I watched it on the recommendation of an old friend. He was surprised that Aronofsky suddenly made a comedy action movie. The plot follows a former promising baseball player who, after an injury, finds himself in a state of decay—working as a bartender, drinking heavily, and feeling sorry for himself. His punk neighbor flies to London and leaves his cat with him to look after. But it's not that simple — the neighbor is being hunted by the Russian mafia and Jewish hitmen, and our hero is unwittingly drawn into gangster showdowns.

It is indeed a very unusual film. Unusual for Darren Aronofsky. He has increasingly been practicing heavy psychological dramas - Black Swan, The Wrestler, etc. And now a comedy action film? Well, I'll tell you, there's no comedy in it. Two-thirds of the film is typical Aronofsky—heavy and depressing—and only towards the end does it pick up speed and lighten up a bit. This is mainly due to the charming cat, the semi-competent drug addict, and two Hasidic killers. Otherwise, everything is as it should be—violence, the Russian mafia, corrupt cops, a pile of corpses, sadism, blood and gore on an industrial scale, and other delights. The main thing that confused me was the obvious repetitiveness of almost everything. I've seen practically everything shown on screen in other films, only in a different interpretation and in a different order. Moreover, it was in someone else's interpretation that it was in the genre of a crime comedy action film. Aronofsky simply added his characteristic gloom and psychological turmoil to all this and shook it up without mixing it. And where can you escape from the “great American dream” — bury all your friends, set them up to be killed by gangsters, use cunning to pit gang clans against each other, and when they kill each other off, flee to the islands with your stolen loot. Very original, right? In my opinion, that's how 90% of films in this genre end. And a special hello to the localizers of the title, which has absolutely nothing to do with what's happening on screen. It's like releasing a film called “Penalty” about a former soccer player under the title “Punishment.”