CAUGHT STEALING

Here's the honest decision. Darren Aronofsky has made a raucous, often funny, well-crafted thriller — the action sequences land, the pacing knows when to breathe, and there's a real attempt underneath it all to say something about trauma, ego and redemption. Somewhere in this movie is a story about taking responsibility for your actions and realizing what matters.

But it's buried. Buried under more than 150 "f" words, under graphic and bloody violence, under heavy drinking and drug use and a backstory that never feels well explained. The characters are hard to like — including Hank himself — and by the end it's difficult to say the film offers anything of real value.

The moral turn arrives too late to redeem the noise around it. So even for the mature adults it's aimed at, our answer is to skip it — the cost far outweighs what little the movie manages to say.

Hank was a high school baseball phenom, once bound for the first round of the MLB draft. Now he's a New York bartender nursing an obsession with the San Francisco Giants, an alcohol problem, and a loyal but flawed girlfriend he hides from his mother.

Then his mohawked British neighbor, Russ, asks him to cat-sit while he races back to London. It turns out Russ is a drug dealer who owes dangerous people a great deal of money — the Russian mob, a wannabe thug named Colorado, and two murderous Hasidic Jews. They come looking for the cash. What they find is a clueless Hank who has no idea where it is.

Three stars, and they're earned in the craft. This is a high-stakes, comic thriller with genuine energy — good humor, well-built action sequences, and a story that careens through its plot like a ballplayer rounding the bases. Aronofsky slows the pacing just enough to let you breathe, so you never quite feel like your head's been spun around on a bat.

The trouble is that it's a lot to take in, and the messy, poorly explained backstory makes it hard to enjoy any of the characters — Hank included. The attempt at meaning is real, but it's shrouded by the violence and drinking, and the emotional change comes too late to fully land. It's a decent movie for the audience it wants. It's also one the noise nearly buries.

This is a film that worships things. Baseball and alcohol both function as objects of devotion, and around them the movie builds its major themes: egotism, selfishness, and a man pining after a failed future he can't let go of. For most of its runtime nothing shifts — Hank is more grieved by his ruined leg and lost career than by the friend who died in the crash that ended both. Only near the end does he move toward responsibility and toward seeing what actually matters.

There are light redemptive elements, then, but they arrive faintly and late. There's also a Romantic streak — a relationship that hinges on sexual passion and rejects proper authority — running underneath.

The film's treatment of its Hasidic Jewish mobsters deserves a word: they're shown viewing violence as somehow aligned with their faith, saying "God willing" over the hoped-for outcome of a violent act even while strictly keeping the Sabbath. It's a muddled, unflattering picture of religion, and worth naming as false theology rather than fact.

Underneath Hank's story is a longing every viewer knows — to be more than our worst decisions, to have the wreckage behind us made right. The gospel answers what this movie can only gesture toward: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9).

There's a decent thriller in here — funny, well-shot, reaching for something about trauma and second chances. But it's smothered by relentless profanity, brutal violence, and a wreck of a moral center that only sobers up at the last minute. For every audience, the cost is simply too high. Our answer is to skip it. Looking for something worth your evening instead? Try our latest family-friendly picks.