(Credits: Sony Pictures Releasing)

A strange thing happened when I watched the trailer for the new Darren Aronofsky crime thriller, Caught Stealing. In two and a half minutes, I witnessed Austin Butler, Matt Smith, Zoe Kravitz and a host of other famous faces become embroiled in a madcap, ultraviolent, gleefully preposterous caper involving stolen money, mistaken identity, punk rock, a cat, a lizard, a pair of burly Hasidic Jew gangsters, the Russian mob, and a hitman played by Puerto Rican music superstar Bad Bunny. Then, when the trailer ended, I was left with one overriding thought: “That looks like a blast”.

While Aronofsky has always been a critically lauded filmmaker, albeit one prone to interspersing his masterpieces with misbegotten duds, one word that could never previously be used to describe his work is “fun”. This is the man who made Requiem For A Dream, one of the most harrowing drug addiction dramas ever committed to celluloid, made pro-wrestling fans and critics alike weep into their popcorn with The Wrestler, and turned the world of ballet into a psychological horror mindscape in Black Swan. Aronofsky is many things, but prior to this trailer, his films have never really been a barrel of laughs.

Yet, undeniably, Caught Stealing looks like the kind of fun, quick-witted, riotously entertaining crime movie that used to come out of Hollywood every other week in the 1990s. In fact, the trailer gave off more than a whiff of a thought experiment that may be anathema for some cinephiles, but sounds like the best idea in the world to someone like me: “What if a director tried to be Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie at the same time?!”

Now, yes, I understand that this is probably a reductive take, but hey, I’m an honest man, and it’s the first thing that slammed into my brain when the trailer ended. Obviously, Tarantino and Ritchie have taken very different career paths since their ’90s efforts, and they now make very different films, with Ritchie in particular seeming hellbent on proving that it is possible to make six action movies in a three-year period and not have their quality suffer. He’s wrong, naturally, but that’s neither here nor there when it comes to Caught Stealing, because I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look like a mashup of Pulp Fiction and Snatch.

All the ’90s Tarantino/Ritchie-esque hallmarks are present and accounted for in Caught Stealing. A pulpy crime tale that brings together a collection of eccentric, deadly underworld characters? Yep. A sense of humour that enlivens every line of highly quotable dialogue? You bet. A quick pace and bursts of shocking violence? Oh yes. On top of that, while the trailer doesn’t include profanity, I’d be shocked if the movie doesn’t feature a healthy assortment of F-bombs and creatively filthy insults.

As a bonus, the screenplay for Caught Stealing was written by Charlie Huston, and he adapted his own 2004 novel for the screen. I’ve read an assortment of Huston’s novels and comic books over the years, and they’re pretty much all pulpy, violent, funny thrillers with likeably fucked up characters and page-turning twists. Ironically, one of the few books I haven’t read is Caught Stealing, but the movie trailer seems perfectly in-keeping with Huston’s usual style, with maybe an extra layer of heightened reality grafted on top for good measure.

So, with all that said, it’s time to ask the all-important question: Is Aronofsky rebranding as the new Tarantino/Ritchie? The short answer is, “Probably not”. But the long answer is that it’s clear Caught Stealing represents a departure for the filmmaker, and it indicates a desire to show that he has other strings to his bow than traumatic, haunting dramas that hollow out audiences’ souls.

In truth, it makes sense: moviegoers don’t only want to watch one type of film, so why would a filmmaker only want to make one type of film? For all we know, Aronofsky may spend his time watching rom-coms, cartoons, and action movies, but until now, he’s been pigeon-holed as someone who only makes weird, cerebral pictures or emotional onslaughts.

In fact, Aronofsky has already revealed that he felt lost after the release of The Whale, his histrionic drama about a morbidly obese English teacher (played by an Oscar-winning Brendan Fraser) who spends most of the film’s 117 minutes crying his eyes out. “I was really upset that I couldn’t figure out what was next,” Aronofsky told Vanity Fair. “And I kind of had this urge to do something fun. I felt like there was just so much tension in our normal lives that I felt like the one thing that Hollywood has always done great is entertain.”

So, there you have it, folks. Maybe Aronofsky has had his fill of serious, thought-provoking subjects for a while, and he’s about to enter his “fun” period. It just so happens that his first attempt at a good time seems to channel Tarantino and Ritchie at their delirious best.