{"id":1983216,"date":"2025-08-27T20:11:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1983216"},"modified":"2025-08-27T20:11:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T20:11:17","slug":"austin-butler-in-a-criminal-schlep-through-downtown-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/austin-butler-in-a-criminal-schlep-through-downtown-nyc\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Butler in a criminal schlep through downtown NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F2%2F2025%2F08%2Fnewspress-collage-i1151rxdl-1756321422006.jpg?quality%3D90%26strip%3Dall%261756307108\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--review alignleft\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n\t\t<span class=\"inline-module--review__eyebrow subsection-heading-semi__label\"><br \/>\n\t\t\tmovie review\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"inline-module--review__title subsection-heading-semi\">\n\t\t\tCAUGHT STEALING\t\t<\/h2>\n<div class=\"rating\">\n<div class=\"rating__stars\">\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--filled\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 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stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"rating__star rating__star--empty\"><?php \/**\n * Review star.\n * \n * @package nyp-editor\n *\/\n\n??><\/p>\n<style><![CDATA[\n\t.review-block-star {\n\t\t--review-block-star--empty-color: #585858;\n\t\t--review-block-star--fill-color: #000;\n\t}\n]]><\/style>\n<p><svg class=\"icon-star review-block-star\" stroke=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\" fill=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\" stroke-width=\"0\" viewbox=\"0 0 16 16\" height=\"13px\" width=\"13px\">\n\t<defs>\n\t\t<lineargradient id=\"half-gradient\">\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"50%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--fill-color)\"\/>\n\t\t\t<stop stop-opacity=\"1\" offset=\"0%\" stop-color=\"var(--review-block-star--empty-color)\"\/>\n\t\t<\/lineargradient>\n\t<\/defs>\n\t<path d=\"M3.612 15.443c-.386.198-.824-.149-.746-.592l.83-4.73L.173 6.765c-.329-.314-.158-.888.283-.95l4.898-.696L7.538.792c.197-.39.73-.39.927 0l2.184 4.327 4.898.696c.441.062.612.636.283.95l-3.523 3.356.83 4.73c.078.443-.36.79-.746.592L8 13.187l-4.389 2.256z\">\n\t<\/path>\n<\/svg>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Running time: 107 minutes. Rated R (strong violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality\/nudity and brief drug use). In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>There is a nasty habit in Hollywood, and among movie critics, of allowing filmmakers to incessantly upchuck the same lame crime\u00a0retreads.<\/p>\n<p>They are blinded by cartoony underworld figures, seedy alleys, drugs and guns as they blithely overlook the lazy writing, painfully obvious plots, gratuitous violence and chase scenes as enlivening\u00a0as a Metro North commute.<\/p>\n<p>All of these bruising exercises are\u00a0nearly identical, except lately they\u2019ve become both blander and more unpleasant than ever.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s especially true of \u201cCaught Stealing,\u201d an aimless schlep with delusions of grandeur starring \u201cElvis\u201d actor Austin Butler as a Lower East Side bartender named Hank who becomes an unwitting pawn in a narcotics dealing scheme.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the talented Darren Aronofsky of \u201cBlack Swan\u201d and \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/09\/17\/the-whale-review-brendan-frasers-comeback-is-unforgettable\/\">The Whale<\/a>\u201d was caught directing it.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"single__inline-module aligncenter\">\n<div class=\"inline-module inline-module--more inline-module--columnist inline-module--more--thirds\">\n<div class=\"inline-module__inner\">\n<h2 class=\"inline-module__heading subsection-heading subsection-heading--single-line \">\n\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"subsection-heading__sub\">Johnny Oleksinski<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>He\u2019s best known for psychological thrills set against arrestingly grimy visuals. Aronofsky\u2019s brain goes on summer break here. There\u2019s absolutely nothing intriguing bubbling beneath the surface of this mystifyingly un-fun movie that mostly takes place below 14th\u00a0Street.<\/p>\n<p>The yawn of a story is that some silly thugs covet an unremarkable object. Tale as old as crime. A group of gangsters and a corrupt\u00a0police officer\u00a0are on the hunt for Hank\u2019s friend Russ\u2019 hidden key to a cash-filled storage unit. That\u2019s\u00a0all, folks.<\/p>\n<p>The closest \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d comes to creating a character to care about is Hank, an alcoholic whose dream of playing baseball for the Giants was ended by a fatal,\u00a0drunken car accident.<\/p>\n<p>Every day he phones his California mom, during calls that feel fake, to chit chat about their favorite team.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Regina King plays a dirty cop in \u201cCaught Stealing,\u201d starring Austin Butler. <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>At night,\u00a0Hank\u00a0relives the crash in his nightmares. Wherever he goes, he stares longingly at bottles of booze.\u00a0He\u00a0is forced to stop drinking after he loses a kidney in a fight, and then he goes on a bender and strips.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the stuff of eye rolls.\u00a0Hank\u2019s\u00a0trauma and addiction are cliched and underexplored, and he\u00a0is simply\u00a0not\u00a0enticing\u00a0enough to carry an entire\u00a0movie.<\/p>\n<p>Butler does brooding well. We already knew that. He breathily simmered to great effect all through \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2022\/06\/23\/elvis-review-austin-butler-dazzles-as-the-king\/\">Elvis<\/a>\u201d and \u201c<a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/02\/21\/entertainment\/dune-part-two-review-a-triumph-thats-better-than-the-first\/\">Dune: Part Two<\/a>.\u201d And he brings his natural leading-man gravitas to this. But Hank is an empty shell of\u00a0diminishing\u00a0interest.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Hank\u2019s roommate Russ is a British punk played by Matt Smith. <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Hank\u2019s girlfriend, Yvonne, played by Zo\u00eb Kravitz? Couldn\u2019t tell you much about her except she always seems jetlagged and is in less of the film than you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n<p>Russ, meanwhile, is a British punk with a mohawk, who\u2019s given a performance by \u201cThe Crown\u201d\u2019s Matt Smith that suggests he maybe once saw a photo of a mohawk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCaught Stealing,\u201d based on author Charlie Huston\u2019s book I shan\u2019t be reading, is set in 1998, so the east side thugs are Russians, Hasidic Jews and Bad Bunny. \u00a0<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Zoe Kravitz doesn\u2019t actually do a whole lot in \u201cCaught Stealing.\u201d <span class=\"credit\">\u00a9Sony Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It\u2019s with these slightly wacky\u00a0baddies\u00a0orbiting Hank that Aronofsky thinks he\u2019s directing a comedy\u00a0\u2014 or his skewed idea of\u00a0one.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Shmully (Vincent D\u2019Onofrio) and Lipa (Liev Schreiber) serve Hank matzo\u00a0ball soup and make him drive the getaway car because it\u2019s Shabbat.<\/p>\n<p>The dirty cop, Detective Roman (Regina King), delivers a speech about the glory of black-and-white cookies.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is\u00a0remotely\u00a0funny.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"nyp-slideshow-modal-image wp-block-image aligncenter size-large\"><figcaption>Aronofsky tried to dig into the comedy of \u201cCaught Stealing\u201d with characters such as Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D\u2019Onofrio).  <span class=\"credit\">AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>There\u2019s a bunch of \u201cScooby Doo\u201d closeups on a cat\u00a0that, warning to the squeamish, gets abused by the Russians. Perhaps breaking a kitty\u2019s leg\u00a0gets laughs\u00a0in Siberia?<\/p>\n<p>In the end, what\u00a0\u201cCaught Stealing\u201d has stolen is time and talent.<\/p>\n<p>The only guy out there routinely doing a good job with this genre is Guy Ritchie. His output is impeccably cast,\u00a0hilarious\u00a0and\u00a0has\u00a0badass, thrillingly brutal action sequences. Unlike the predictable \u201cCaught Stealing,\u201d there are unexpected twists.<\/p>\n<p>Aronofsky, whose work I\u2019ve always liked, should retreat back to the dark recesses of the psyche and leave the comically dark underbelly of organized crime to the pros.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>movie review CAUGHT STEALING Running time: 107 minutes. Rated R (strong violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality\/nudity and brief drug use). In theaters. There is a nasty habit in Hollywood, and among movie critics, of allowing filmmakers to incessantly upchuck the same lame crime\u00a0retreads. They are blinded by cartoony underworld figures, seedy alleys, drugs and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1983217,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25174],"tags":[25538,311575,21741,21993,304995,21912,317342],"class_list":["post-1983216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gossip","tag-actors","tag-austin-butler","tag-entertainment","tag-films","tag-movie-reviews","tag-movies","tag-zoe-kravitz"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Austin-Butler-in-a-criminal-schlep-through-downtown-NYC.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1983216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1983216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1983217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1983216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1983216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1983216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}