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September 15, 2025 14 mins
Ronald Young Jr. reviews Caught Stealing by himself… 

RYJ contemplates violence…

RYJ -  2.5 of 5 stars

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Available in theaters

Starring Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoe Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, Benito Martinew Ocasio, Griffin Dunne, Carol Kane
Written by Charlie Huston
Directed by Darren Aronofsky

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
A man named Hank is enlisted to watch his neighbor
Russ's cat named Bud. Shortly after Russ leaves, Hank is
beset upon by a number of violent thugs and enforcers,
all looking for something that Russ owed them. Hank is
presumed to have been caught stealing. I'm Ronald Young Jr.
And I'm leaving the theater, which is.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
All right?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
This is Ronald and I am leaving the theater after
seeing Caught Stealing. Caught Stealing Written by Charlie Huston, directed
by Darren Aronofsky, starring Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoe Kravitz,
Matt Smith, Leave Schreiber, Vincent Danafrio, Benito Martinez Ocazio also

(01:44):
known as Bad Bunny, Griffin Dunn, and Carol Caine and
for complete cast listing, you can go to the link
in our show notes It is just Me Today. Caught
Stealing is a movie about a man named Hank played
by Austin Butler, who is tasked with taking care of

(02:05):
his neighbor's cat. His neighbor is Matt Smith, who is
going to deal with his ailing father in England, so
he leaves the cat with Hank uh and Hank then
is beset upon by a number of villains and thugs
who are attempting to get something back from his neighbor

(02:27):
that he did not tell Hank about before he left this.
If you watch the trailer for this film, it is
kind of billed as this like a kind of like
a crime rump movie where there's you know, there's there's
there's a fish out of water. Oh no, all this
stuff is happening to me type of thing. Uh, it's

(02:50):
I'm not thinking of any comparisons right at the moment,
And I'll tell you why in a minute. You'll you'll
probably understand why in a minute. But it's just one
of those films where it's like, oh, no, you got
the wrong guy type thing, but now you're still responsible.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Like it's one of those films.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
And Hank is in a casual relationship with Zoe Kravitz
in the film, and she is trying to help him
as he goes along his way trying to navigate this situation.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
I didn't like this movie.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
I have a feeling that it's probably attached to the
last week and really starting to think about violence and
just think about violence generally, how it's used in film,
what it means as a tool of oppression, and what
it means when when what it means when it's gratuitous.
What does it even mean when there's something that is gratuitous,

(03:41):
gratuitously violent, or needlessly violent in some cases, And this
film is very violent, and it's violent in a way
where there is no payoff. I don't feel any Catharsis afterwards,
and I started to think about what that actually means.
That there's a lot of stuff that we're watching in

(04:04):
which there's some sort of violence setup, or someone gets
punched in the face, and I'm supposed to be so
angry that i can't wait to see that person get
like dropped off a.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Cliff later in the movie.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
It's typically like some sort of goon or something that's
doing something terrible. This is a film in which early
in the movie, Austin Butler is beset upon and beat
so severely by these gangsters. And they show this to
us by these Ukrainian gangsters or Russian. No, I think
they're Russian, by these Russian gangsters, and I didn't make

(04:35):
a mistake. There's a point in the film in which
they are Someone says they are Ukrainian. The other person
says they are Russian. So it's not me making a mistake.
I'm just trying to remember what the movie settled on.
And they beat him so severely that one it was
hard to watch a little bit, Like the sound design
was great in that regard, but also he has to
get his kidney removed because it was damaging. It was

(04:57):
bleeding inside of him and it was bad. There's there's
a sense in there where when you see this type
of violence in a film, you expect him to kind
of pull back to be like maybe like more funny.
Maybe it's like, oh, these are like hapless criminals, and
the violence isn't like it's moral cartoonish violence. But this
felt like very like gritty, real world violence. But then

(05:19):
they would try to punctuate it with jokes. He one
of the most violent thugs in the movie, is kind
of making jokes and he's like not not very good
at English, but he's also like making a lot of
pop culture references when he's talking. But when he's doing that,
horrible things are happening to Hank. And for me watching this,
and I'm wondering if this is attached to what happened

(05:42):
last week and kind of how I've been thinking about
violence and the way everyone's been kind of pontificating on
it what it means. I was uncertain if that's if
like this movie was doing a bad job of this,
which I suspect that it is, And is it just
compound by the fact that I'm thinking about these things,
or is it just the job is done so badly

(06:05):
that this is making me feel bad, And I think
maybe it's probably both, because I feel bad after watching this,
Like I left and I felt sad. They at one
point in the movie, like a way maybe a quarter
of the way through, they kill Zoe Kravitz and then
they like kind of make us look at it like
not not her death but her body. And then the

(06:27):
main character is suffering with trauma from the past of
him killing his teammate while he was driving drunk, and
his teammate is also I would say racially ambiguous.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
But I'm pretty sure he was black.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
And so I'm sitting here looking at like kind of
these black folks that are facing the fallout of the
decisions that the main character, Hank is making, and thinking, Wow,
I don't I don't like how this is I don't
like how this is happening. And I think one part
that really got me was just looking at this Kravitz.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Part really got me.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Because I just felt, I don't know, I don't know
how to explain this. I just felt so bad like
seeing her dead and seeing that it was essentially because
of him, and there's no like, there's no other part
of the movie where we get to be like I mean,
at one point I was like, man, I hope she
was in on it and this is like a fake

(07:22):
death and it's like, oh no, a double cross, Like no,
she she's like dead and then stays dead the rest
of the film in a way that.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
I'm like, why are'm making me watch this? Like what,
like I why would you do this? To be like?

Speaker 1 (07:35):
This doesn't and she really had nothing to do with
any of the stuff that was happening. She was just
helping her boyfriend and it they like, I just that
part really soured the rest of the movie. And it
happens about forty minutes in and the movie is an
hour and forty seven minutes long, so everything that happens

(07:58):
after that, I kept thinking what about her? And I know, y'all,
I know it's kind of wild and like maybe again,
maybe it's connected to the way I'm feeling right now,
but it really, it really, it just stuck with me, man,
like why I don't understand?

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Like what was the watching the rest of the movie.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
There was nothing about this movie that made me feel
like this death was some sort of significant plot point
that needed to happen in order for the film to
be better or grittier or more motivating. He was already
suffering trauma from his past that was hovering over the

(08:37):
rest of the movie. You introduce this new trauma, and
then over the course of the movie, like just more
and more of his close people are and people from
his circle social circle are being murdered.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
And in a way that's like I don't understand.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Why does he The only thing that I think that
makes this movie better is if at some point this
guy dies too, And of course that doesn't happen. And
I'm sorry to spoil this for people who are planning
on watch it. Watching it and even having said all that,
I think one important thing to note is that the
acting is good. I mean, you heard the names that

(09:14):
I said, Vincent, Dinafrio, Leave Schreiber, Austin Butler, of course,
Zoe Kravitz, Regina King, everybody punched into work.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
But I really am concerned.

Speaker 1 (09:28):
About why this is a story that needs to be
told right now. And it's not just the timing, because
obviously the movie being released was never going to be
at a time in which you don't know what's going
to happen in the news based on a movie coming
out like this. But I'm saying, like, if you watch
this movie. When I got to the end, I was

(09:49):
just like, oh, well, what was the why did I?

Speaker 2 (09:50):
What was this? Did I?

Speaker 1 (09:52):
What was this? Why did I just watch this? And
I don't like that feeling at the end of a movie.
I don't like that. I want to be like, well
they made laugh or something like that, and the parts
in which they were trying to make me laugh, I
just felt like, y'all murdered Zoe Kravitz. I don't understand
why you did that, Like, what was the what was
the purpose of that? Like normally you watch a film

(10:12):
like that and when that happened, you're like, oh man,
these these these antagonists are really serious, but none of
the antagonists, like the antagonists would be like serious antagonists,
but also doing silly things that's supposed to make you laugh,
but it's it's not funny enough to match with the
I don't know how to explain this, but you've seen

(10:32):
enough zany hijink films to be like, oh, these these
bad guys are bad guys, but the good guys are
way better. Like the protagonists aren't really in any danger,
even though these bad guys are bad guys, and if
they do get one significant death off, it is for
a reason or for what seems like a reason, and

(10:52):
it just that's not what I got in this film.
I think the acting was great. I think the movie
like it did make me want to watch it. Would
I watch it again? Absolutely not. Yeah, And with all
that being said, I think I have to give this.
I'm gonna give it exactly a two point five because
I think I feel the same way about this movie
that I did about The Long Walk, which is why

(11:15):
did you make me watch this?

Speaker 2 (11:17):
You know?

Speaker 1 (11:18):
But again it ends up not being a two or
lower simply because I mean, the acting was good, the
construction of the film was fine, but I like y'all
wrote something that I don't think needed to be made,
and it makes me wonder about the things that aren't
being made. If this is what's being made right now
in twenty twenty five, when it's difficult for movies to

(11:39):
be made, why are these the ones that are coming out.
I don't like it, and I hope this one and
The Long Walk disappear into the ether of forgetfulness.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Two point five stars and with that, this.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Leaving the Theater is a production of Oh it's big
round Studios. I mix this episod and y'all can tell
from the weariness of my voice it's been a long day.
It's the end of a Sunday, it's been a long week,
and it's about six fifty three right now. And what
I'm planning to do is walk into my house and
start watching Highest to Lowess for an on the couch

(12:16):
episode of Leaving the Theater.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
On the Couch is back, but on the Couch is
only available through Patreon. That's right, Patreon dot com slash
Leaving the Theater. You now have three unique offerings on
the Patreon only that is the ad free feed. I'm
sure you've been hearing the ads. Now we turn them on.
They are programmatic. They should be out through all of
the catalog of the episodes. If you're listening right now,

(12:40):
if you heard this episode, you probably heard an ad
unless you're unless you're a Patreon member, there is I
don't like that, which I need to get a new
episode up. I know, I know, but I'm working on
this right now. And you now have on the couch.
So on the couch episodes which will involve typically television
shows and you know, documentaries, things on Netflix, stuff that

(13:01):
shows up that is not going to be in the theater.
I will now be reviewing those on the couch. There
will be a little bit lower production lift for me,
I e. They'll be like, you know, less of the intro,
just more me sitting on the couch pontificating. They'll still
be edited, but just edited more lightly. But those will
still be available through Patreon only. This is a labor

(13:23):
of love, but it is labor. So if you're interested
in the extra offerings that we have on patreon dot com,
go to Patreon dot com slash leaving the Theater or
go to the link in our show notes. Show art
from Heather Wilder. Theme music by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder.
For more information about Colt stealing, check out our show notes.

(13:44):
You can follow me on Instagram Blue Sky, TikTok, threads,
or letterbox at Owiz Bigron. That's at O h I
T S b I g R o N. You can
find out more about the show and other Ow's Big
Round Studio shows by following us on Instagram at Owitz
Bigrond Studios.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Leaving the theater will be back soon. Thanks for listening.
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