Story Movie
1998, New York. Hank, a promising baseball player who never turned professional because of an injury, leads an ordinary life: he works in a bar, dates Yvonne, cheers for his favorite team and calls his mother, also a big baseball fan, every day. When a punk neighbor goes away for a couple of days and asks him to look after his biting cat, Hank's life changes abruptly. He gets badly beaten up by badass Russian thugs, and the guy finds himself in the middle of a crime story involving local gangs.
Review 4K Movie
Darren Aronofsky's status among millennials is so high that each of his new projects automatically attracts interest. What can you do when you have Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and Black Swan behind you? As we can see, his career has been a success. And if you were expecting something striking and philosophically charged from Darren Aronofsky's ninth feature film, hold your horses. The 59-year-old director decided to let loose and give viewers a pure genre film. This ironic crime drama tells the story of a lovable loser who simply drifts through life until one fine day he becomes the target of dangerous gangs in New York. It gets to the point where he has to flee and hope that the situation will resolve itself if he lies low in California. And Griffin Dunne appears in a couple of scenes?
He played the lead role in Martin Scorsese's charming film After Hours, where the main character has to go through several unusual events in one night. Forty years after its release in 1985, the film has become a cult classic. Perhaps the new film Caught Stealing will also gain some cult status, who knows. It is important to note that the former civil husband of the lovely Rachel Weisz tried his hand at the sandbox, occupied by the important Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. All because of the colorful gangsters, each of whom stands out in some way. A couple of Russians, a couple of Hasidim, a Colombian, a British punk. The only things missing were an academic Asian diaspora and representatives of Antarctica. All these criminal subjects are hunting for a bartender who failed to become a professional baseball player in his youth. How else could the guy's adventures be shown?
The script does not contain any sharp plot twists or memorable dialogues that would be discussed after the screenings. Except maybe a popular or aspiring YouTube blogger would upload a video to their channel with a screaming title: “You didn't understand Aronofsky's new movie, Hank dreamed it all, he didn't notice how quickly the beer in the bottle he was holding in the morning after a hot night with his girlfriend ran out.” Jokes aside, the creator of The Fountain focused on something else. Let the characters talk casually without unnecessary frills for the sake of boyish quotes, but we will be able to capture the long-gone era of the 90s with its signature soundtrack, push-button phones, aesthetic shots, and unique spirit. With the help of the irreplaceable Matthew Libatique, it worked. Are there not enough viewers nostalgic for those times?
The Big Apple, as seen through the eyes of Darren Aronofsky, seems to suffocate, shrink, and become cramped for the main character, who, understandably, did not want such problems, but the problems found the handsome Austin Butler with his face and body. And so untimely, when he decided to commit to a relationship with a pretty girl and quit drinking (the stash in his shabby apartment commands respect). Echoing the rules of baseball, the plot of this new release arouses interest and maintains it with a solid rhythm, as we want to know whether the batter will make it “home” after successfully overcoming all the bases before that. In short, even though he is a former alcoholic and baseball player, his skills come in handy, but in a slightly different way. If the stakes in a real game are points for victory, then in the case of the protagonist Austin Butler, it's his life.
A cute cat also gets involved in the story, which is of little use until it becomes the object of care and protection on the part of the seemingly lost guy. Risking his health, this handsome guy with the body of Apollo goes all the way when he realizes that he cannot go on living like this. The symbolic blow with a bat to the head of his punk neighbor, which got our main character into an unexpected mess, as reported in the film's synopsis, sets off a chain of intense events that will lead the ex-alcoholic either to failure or to victory, you know. It's gratifying that Darren Aronofsky doesn't go into dark seriousness, adding funny touches to the narrative, especially in the scenes with Yuri Kolokolnikov and the well-known foreign agent. Liv Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio are good in these roles, for whom Shabbat is as important as dealing with debtors. Can you believe it?
The creator of The Wrestler makes it clear that he is having fun and looking for ways to reach the hearts of viewers in order to entertain them in turn. Austin Butler resembles a young Brad Pitt in places, acting in a way that makes him memorable and elicits empathy for his character. He is a star among stars, with a bright future ahead of him. The main thing is that the film turned out to be enjoyable to watch both in the cinema and at home in peace and quiet during an autumn storm, when you don't want to leave your den. The only thing we didn't believe was Austin Butler's physical form and his image as a young man who drinks heavily. They don't go together at all. After all, alcohol also affects the body and muscles. But here you can hide behind genetics or whatever else. Well, it was a waste of time for the actor to train so hard, whose photos from training have been circulating on social media in recent weeks. Maybe we should go to the cinema again?
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