fter a tragic childhood accident robbed him of a chance to play professional baseball, Hank Thompson’s (Austin Butler) adult life has been stagnating. Serving drinks to customers at dingy Paul’s Bar in the Lower East Side – before going home to serve alcohol to himself – populates the majority of his weeks, with the only sparks being visits from his vivacious girlfriend Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz). But when reprobate next-door-neighbor Russ (Matt Smith) makes a quick getaway to London to visit his ailing father, asking Hank to watch his cat during the trip, the favor inadvertently brings a slew of even more unsavory characters – and their wraths – upon the unsuspecting bartender and his girl. Beaten, bruised, and threatened with worse, Hank must now navigate a sleazy underworld of savage mobsters if he hopes to return to his former existence.

“You sound like Dick Van Dyke, mate.” Although Matt Smith is the highlight, playing very much against type with a wildly eccentric persona, the bulk of the setup is established through mediocre dialogue. There’s small talk to paint the leads as whimsical and carefree, but also adventurous and edgy; a sex scene backs this up, though it’s the kind where clothes mostly stay on, negating some of the boastfully aggressive flirtation. But if Hank can be summed up in a single moment, it’s when he drinks a beer for breakfast. It tells the audience all they need to know about the character; and, sadly, what it designates never really changes. He begins as a generic sort of irreverent, devil-may-care, antiestablishment youth – lacking ambition or aim and without much of a future or purpose (or accomplishments/possessions) – and ends up that way, even after experiencing some truly harrowing occurrences.

Strangely, he ought to be an easy underdog. He’s a decent fellow, standing out a hair from the rowdy crowds he frequents and the rough neighborhoods through which he maneuvers. And, if nothing else, he has a lover who sees in him everything that he doesn’t see in himself. It’s because of her generosity and charitableness that audiences might suspect he’s on a road to redemption; if she can tolerate his roughness around the edges, surely he’s not entirely hopeless (they are, of course, both unusually glamorous amid their unglamorous surroundings). “I don’t like stupid guys, Hank,” she insists, pushing the notion that while he may currently appear unsuitable to her every standard – primarily with his wealth of financial issues and health predicaments – surely he’ll redeem himself in time.

And yet, it’s not long after he encounters some of the most realistic consequences to violence ever depicted on the big screen that the film makes a fatal flaw. It may think it’s raising the stakes on Hank’s out-of-control spiral into the underbelly of New York crime, but it actually, essentially, removes the stakes altogether. It certainly doesn’t help that the severity in general is high; it’s a tightrope walk to find the balance when attempting a dark comedy like this, mixing gangster-based brutality with the levity of idiosyncratic roles (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio are the best of this aspect, disappearing into their accents and makeup/styling) and a hapless hero accidentally, successfully navigating a desperate bid for survival despite being completely out of his element (for the most part, the antagonists have to be repeatedly, specifically inept so that the protagonist can look serendipitous). But director Darren Aronofsky can’t find that balance. He wants audiences to chuckle at the mayhem while also cringing at the death and destruction, all while serving up characters that are too absurd for believable villainy and bloodshed that is too extreme for laughs. At a certain point, it becomes impossible to care about the wrapping up of loose ends – which “Caught Stealing” does exceptionally well – because the horrors of Hank’s imbroglio grow too unsparing.

The film may want to mimic the quirkiness of “Get Shorty” or “The Whole Nine Yards” (or, “Smokin’ Aces” and “Bullet Train” as newer references) with a vibe akin to Guy Ritchie’s wackier oeuvre, but the supplementing harshness it employs makes the end result closer to 2014’s “The Gambler” or “Uncut Gems.” It’s fast-paced but exhausting rather than erratically upbeat. It’s obvious what Aronofsky (and screenwriter Charlie Huston, adapting his own book) wishes to achieve, chiefly with the crime/comedy meld, but the morbidness of key components invalidates the humor; it’s just not much fun when the cruelty is so consequential.

– The Massie Twins