A former baseball player seeks to build a new life for himself and escape his past in New York City, only to become immersed in its criminal underbelly.
The latest film by auteur director Darren Aronofsky (The Whale, Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream) is unlike any other in his filmography: a 90s-set crime thriller laden with punk imagery and iconography, including Matt Smith’s orange-spiked mohawk. In agreeing to take care of Smith’s character Russ’ cat for a few days, Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) becomes unwittingly embroiled in a series of encounters with threatening gangsters – and he has no idea why.
Sound-tracked by the incomparable English post-punk band IDLES (the result of a chance meeting between the band and Aronofsky backstage at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), the film authentically carves out its own identity, injecting punk sound and aesthetics back into the mainstream.
