EASY TO GET `CAUGHT' UP IN THIS SULTRY FISH STORY.

Byline: Janet Maslin The New York Times

A simple plot synopsis will not be kind to Robert M. Young's ``Caught,'' a film that eventually gathers more blunt force than it initially promises. The story centers on a Brooklyn fish store, Joe's Fish, and its proprietor, Joe (Edward James Olmos). He is a kindly, simple fellow proud of both his attractive wife, Betty (Maria Conchita Alonso), and his skill at boning shad with a very sharp knife.

Betty looks awfully well-maintained for a woman who spends her life behind the fish counter. Perhaps this is why she shows signs of discontent with her workaday marriage to Joe. ``Fish are his life,'' she says about her husband, who doesn't really know she is being sardonic. Fish are his life, in fact.

Betty saves most of her affection for Danny (Steven Schub), the couple's scary-looking son, who is unsuccessfully pursuing a career as a stand-up comic. Danny sends back demented home videos of himself, which Betty admires with rapt enthusiasm, proving that Danny is not the only dangerously deluded member of the family.

Into this unstable atmosphere comes Nick (Arie Verveen), a good-looking derelict. At Betty's urging, the homeless man soon is hired to help Joe with the fish and even invited to start living in Danny's room while Danny is away. Everyone in the household takes a lot of showers, and Betty and Nick become acutely aware of each other's physical presence in close quarters. Joe remains amazingly oblivious. Then Danny eventually returns home to discover that something in his parents' house really is fishy.

As directed by Young in a plain, naturalistic style that verges on the unflattering, ``Caught'' initially has trouble capturing the interest in this story. And Young's brand of honesty is sometimes self-defeating, as when he shows how hungry the destitute Nick is with a long dinner-table scene that has Verveen devouring mashed potatoes in close-up beneath what looks like the light of a bare bulb.

But the film begins developing a claustrophobic tension once its three principals have set up housekeeping and Nick and Betty have begun their torrid affair. And Verveen in particular gives it a tormented strength.

``Caught'' captures the erotic power of this illicit romance with scenes of surreptitious lovemaking that show why the characters have taken leave of their senses. It also delivers a genuine shock once Betty finds herself at the mercy of her diabolical son (played fiercely by Schub).

Olmos lumbers through the film announcing Joe's salt-of-the-earth sturdiness and inviting sympathy for this cuckolded saint. Not until the film's heated finale, of which the title gives some indication, does he rise to give this story the surprise and fury it needs.

Verveen has the more richly nuanced role as a man torn between lust and loyalty, and he turns Nick into something subtler than the soap-opera figure he suggests. Alonso flounces through the film with excess vivacity, but she and Verveen eventually make themselves seem convincingly bewitched by passion.

Young, the director whose credits include ``Dominick and Eugene'' and ``The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez,'' presents ``Caught'' with a seriousness that finally overrides its clumsy side.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Caught'' (R; nudity, sexual situations).

The stars: Edward James Olmos, Maria Conchita Alonso, Arie Verveen and Steven Schub.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Robert M. Young. Written by Edward Pomerantz. Produced by Richard Brick and Irwin Young. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: One hour, 49 minutes.

Playing: Selected theaters.

Our rating: Three Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: In ``Caught,'' Arie Verveen is a homeless man who ha s a torrid affair with Maria Conchita Alonso, the wife of a fishmonger who hires and boards him.