Darren Aronofsky’s 2025 film “Caught Stealing”, which is currently available on Netflix in South Korea, is a cheerfully absurd and intense comic noir thriller. As its flawed hero desperately struggling to survive under a situation way over his head, the movie deftly throws a lot of twists and turns into the plot along with a bunch of various colorful figures to enjoy, and you will gladly go along with that even as observing his accumulating plight from the distance.

Austin Butler, a promising young actor who has steadily advanced since his Oscar-nominated breakthrough turn in “Elvis” (2022), plays Henry “Hank” Thompson, who was once a promising young baseball player but now works as a bartender in the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City, 1998. When he returns to his apartment from another working time at his bar, Hank comes across his British friend Russ Miner (Matt Smith), and Russ happens to need Hank right now. Due to some personal reason, Russ must go back to his home in London as soon as possible, and he asks Hank to take care of his cat instead of him for a while at least.

Hank accepts this seemingly simple request from his friend without much hesitation, but this soon leads to a big trouble for him. On the very next day, a couple of suspicious Russian guys come, and they seriously injure Hank just because they think he has something to hide as a close friend/neighbor of Russ. Needless to say, Hank is quite baffled about what is going on around him, but then he belatedly comes to realize that Russ gave him something else besides the cat at that time, and now he is cornered by many other shady figures in addition to those two Russian thugs.

Now this is a familiar setup for your average noir thriller, but there are also a lot of comic absurdity as our rather hapless hero hurriedly bounces from one narrative point to another. For example, we are amused a lot by when Hank is interrogated by a local detective assigned to his case, and the movie also shows some naughty sense of humor when he subsequently discovers a certain important little object at one point in the middle of the story.

Nevertheless, the movie never overlooks what is being at stake for Hank, who becomes more scared and desperate as things get not only more absurd but also more intense. Many of his opponents are not definitely someone he can mess with, but there are not many people around him who can actually help him. In case of his nurse girlfriend, she sincerely cares and worries about him, but she does not easily tolerate his incorrigible behaviors at all, as shown from one particular scene between them.

I must point out that it is often frustrating for us to see Hank making his situation worse in one way or another along the story, but we also get to know how troubled he has been since a devastating incident which ruined his professional athletic career forever. Still feeling a lot of regret and guilt inside him, he also cannot help but think of what he could have become if it had not been for that incident – especially whenever he hears more about the ongoing MLB (Major League Baseball) season.

The screenplay by Charles Huston, which is based on his 2004 novel of the same name, has a lot of rich character details observed from those various figures revolving around Hank in the story. While Hank’s nurse friend functions as the only consolation in his miserable status of life, his rather dopey boss provides some comic relief, and we also get a series of darkly amusing moments from many of Hank’s opponents, who are all deadly serious but also look rather funny at times.

In the end, the movie eventually culminates to a climactic sequence where a lot of things happen here and there, but we never feel like getting confused thanks to the skillful efforts from Aronofsky and his crew including his frequent cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who did a commendable job of imbuing the screen with a palpable sense of time and location. While there are some expected moments of payback, there are also a number of small and big surprises to enjoy, and I particularly appreciate the big irony observed from the end of this electrifying sequence.

Butler is compelling as his character gradually faces his personal demons and then somehow finds his inner strength along the story, and he is also surrounded by a group of talented performers who have each own moment to shine. While Zoë Kravitz brings some warm sensitivity to her several key scenes with Butler, Matt Smith delightfully chews every moment of his appearance as required, and Regina King is also effective as the aforementioned detective character. As some of the main villains in the story, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Benito Martínez Ocasio, who is also known as “Bad Bunny”, go all the way for their respective juicy scenes, and I also like the brief appearances of Griffin Dunne, Carol Kane, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Tenoch Huerta, and a certain Oscar-winning actress to be revealed later in the film. In case of the cat which plays Russ’ cat, it effortlessly steals the show whenever it is on the screen, and you may care more about its safety than anything else in the film.

On the whole, “Caught Stealing” is relatively less ambitious compared to many of Aronofsky’s notable films such as “Requiem for a Dream” (2000) or “Black Swan” (2010), but it is more interesting than his previous film “The Whale” (2022), which somehow garnered a Best Actor Oscar for Brendan Fraser despite its middling result. In short, this is one of the more enjoyable films from last year, and I assure you that you will not be disappointed if you look for any competent genre piece.