Darren Aronofsky frames Caught Stealing as a tender portrait of New York filtered through baseball obsession and personal tragedy. The story follows Hank Thompson, a former high-school phenom whose drunk-driving crash kills his friend and ruins his knee, ending his career. Hank now tends bar, struggles with alcohol after early events, and remains a devoted San Francisco Giants fan in a Mets-centered city. Flashbacks and nightmares tether the present to a past marked by the Twin Towers and vanished local institutions, producing a nostalgic, detail-rich depiction of time, place, and loss.
Butler plays Hank Thompson: a former baseball player who can't play anymore; a bartender who, after some of the early events of the movie, can't drink anymore; and a devoted San Francisco Giants fan surrounded by Mets fans. As his not-quite girlfriend Yvonne ( Zoë Kravitz) says, he's "a good country boy" who calls his mom in California every day. They end every call with "Go Giants!"
For Hank, it's not his first blush with alcohol-connected fatality. In flashbacks that replay as Hank's nightmares, we see him as a hotshot high-school baseball player, soon to be drafted into the pros. While drinking and driving, he careens off the road to avoid a cow, driving straight into a pole. His buddy is dead, and Hank's knee won't ever be the same.
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