CAUGHT STEALING

Name: CAUGHT STEALING
Item: CAUGHT STEALING
Author: Review

"Foul-Mouthed, Violent Attempt at Showing Redemption After Trauma"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

CAUGHT STEALING is a high-stakes, raucous comic thriller about Hank, a former baseball prospect turned hopeless alcoholic, who finds himself caught up with the wrong people after agreeing to take care of his neighbor’s cat. The gangsters come in several forms, the Russian mob, a Puerto Rican wannabe thug named Colorado, and two murderous Hassidic Jews. Hank is now tasked with tracking down some money his neighbor owes these people. They are willing to kill whoever it takes for Hank to deliver the cash.

CAUGHT STEALING is chock full of action, graphic violence and nearly constant obscenities. The excessive content muddles a decent attempt at telling a story about trauma, ego and redemption. The ending has some emotional change. However, the moral lessons are shrouded by all the noise and a messy backstory that never feels well explained. Also, the worshipping of things, pining after a failed future and being obsessed with oneself are all highly prominent themes throughout the movie. CAUGHT STEALING is a humorous and somewhat entertaining movie. However, it’s intended only for mature adults. MOVIEGUIDE® rates it excessive and unacceptable.

Content:

(PaPaPa, C, Ro, FR, B, LLL, VVV, S, NN, AAA, DD, MMM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Very strong, slightly mixed pagan worldview including the indirect worshipping of various things like baseball and alcohol, alongside major themes of egotism and selfishness, though there are some light redemptive elements, plus some light Romantic elements, including a relationship hinging on sexual passion and the rejecting of proper authority, and some light false theology as the Jewish mobsters appear to view killing and other violence as somewhat aligned with their religious viewpoints, including saying “God willing” when discussing the hopeful “positive” outcome of a violent act, but they are strict upholders to their practice of the Sabbath;

Foul Language:

More than 150 “f” words, 22 “s” words (including one written), at least six other obscenities, one GD profanity, an obscene gesture, there’s a clogged toilet that heavily overflows, a litter box is filled with fake feces , a character vomits all over a window (later seen dried), there is a joke about periods, a female product gets stuck up a character’s nose to stop bleeding, and superglue is used to seal up a wound;

Violence:

Very strong and strong violence includes multiple instances of gun violence including killings and maiming, knife wielding, hitting people and objects with a bat as well as stabbing someone with a shard of one, a character gets beat up, two big car accidents that kill people, lots of depictions of blood including head, neck, chest and leg wounds, taking stitches out with pliers as a form of torture, dead bodies with blood visible, people are killed or tortured as a form of proving a point, and the threat of using grenades;

Sex:

Implied fornication with some passionate kissing, grinding against one another and making out, and scantily-clad women dance in a club;

Nudity:

Upper female nudity during implied fornication and kissing, make-out scene, woman flashes a man where you can see through her bra, a male character is shirtless and sometimes pants-less for much of the movie, man and woman undress to their underwear, a naked male appears for a few seconds but nothing’s visible, and one scene show scantily clad female dancers;

Alcohol Use:

Heavy drinking throughout including multiple bar scenes, intoxication and drinking while driving, alcoholism is both encouraged and discouraged, relapse occurs, with apparent redemption in the end;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Several instances of smoking, drugs are discussed, and cocaine is snorted;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Very strong miscellaneous immorality is prominent throughout, including revenge, greed, deceit, stealing, blackmail, questionable or downright heinous morals, and the issues of using violence and threats as solutions to problems are a major theme.

More Detail:

CAUGHT STEALING is a high stake, raucous movie about a former baseball prospect turned hopeless alcoholic who finds himself caught up with the wrong people after agreeing to take care of his neighbor’s cat. These individuals come in several forms – the Russians, a Puerto Rican wannabe thug named Colorado, and…the Hebrews? Yes, there are Hasidic Jewish mobsters in this movie, and they’re not acting very godly. While plenty of fun with good bits of humor and well-crafted action sequences are existent throughout, it’s truthfully hard to enjoy any of the characters very much, including Hank, and it feels like it offers nothing really of value at the end of the day.

CUGHT STEALING is chock full of action, violence and much profanity, which muddle a decent attempt at telling a story about trauma, ego and redemption. There is a decent amount of emotional change in the end, but these moral lessons are shrouded by this noise and a messy backstory that doesn’t ever feel well explained. Furthermore, the worshipping of things, pining after a failed future and being obsessed with oneself are all highly prominent themes throughout, without much change in these attitudes until near the end. It’s a decent movie for mature adults, but, MOVIEGUIDE® ultimately rates this movie as excessive and unacceptable for all other audiences.

The movie stars Austin Butler as Hank, a former high school baseball phenom who was on his way to being selected in the first round of the MLB draft. However, now he’s a bartender living in a New York apartment with an obsession for the San Francisco Giants and a mom who might be even more obsessed. Hank also has a flawed but loyal paramedic girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz), who he hides from his mother. Finally, he has a mohawked foul-mouthed British neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith), who gets them both involved in this mess by asking them to do some pet-sitting while he races back to London.

Hank is soon to discover in a very unpleasant way that Russ is in fact a drug dealer and owes some dangerous people quite a lot of money. Naturally, they come looking for it. Instead, they meet a clueless Hank and Yvonne who have no idea what’s going on and, worse for them, don’t know where the money is.

Chaos ensues, as Hank is now forced to figure out how to solve this issue himself, which includes locating a key that unlocks. . . something, as well as tracking down the location of the cash. If he doesn’t succeed, he risks the lives of his loved ones, and the cat. Yes, these people are that evil.

CAUGHT STEALING eventually reveals in between all this that the reason Hank lost his chance at the majors is because of a car crash that injured his leg, and killed his friend in the passenger seat. You would think that such a notable event is a significant theme of this movie, and it certainly tries to be. For much of it though, it appears Hank is more regretful about the leg and his career being ruined, rather than taking a life. This plot point comes back up again several times. Eventually, the movie gets around the idea of taking responsibility for your actions and realizing what’s important in life. However, it all feels a little too late. Also, it’s very much shrouded by a whole lot of violence and drinking.

The movie careens through its story like a ballplayer racing around the bases. However, the pacing does slow down just enough at times to let viewers breathe, so as not to feel like they just spun around with their head on a bat. However, it is quite a lot to take in and process as the story unfolds and makes it a bit hard to enjoy any of the characters very much.