Caught (1996)

Better they shoulda called it The Fishman Always Rings Twice, since it involves a drifter (Arie Verveen) who moves in with an aging New Jersey fish seller (Edward James Olmos) while moving in on his hot-to-trot wife (Maria Conchita Alonso). But director Robert M. Young goes for low-budget Arthur Miller-style tenement nobility rather than feverish noir kink, and Caught never rises above a tight, nearly sociological focus. Even if it's a grinding haul, the actors deserve honors, with one exception: Verveen trots out the early-Brando mannerisms, but there's little charisma to suggest why he would send the wife into full rut. There is an electrifying debut here: Steven Schub is unctuously vicious as the couple's son, a failed stand-up comic who returns from L.A. to find that a stranger has taken up residence in his father's heart and his mother's bed. The movie's a drab fish, but whenever Schub's on screen you catch a glint of teeth. C

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