In ‘Caught Stealing,’ a crime caper in ’90s New York starring Austin Butler

Darren Aronofsky has already made several indelibly New York movies. But loveable as was the subterranean monochrome paranoia of “Pi” and charming as we all consider the pupil-dilating tragedy of his bleak Brighton Beach-set “Requiem for a Dream,” Aronofsky’s latest, “Caught Stealing,” is easily the director’s most affectionate portrait of his hometown.

That, too, may be a funny way to describe a movie where bodies get brutalized, corpses accumulate and even the cat comes away with a limp. But “Caught Stealing,” a terrific caper starring Austin Butler as a Lower East Side man inadvertently drawn into a nightmarish crime world, is a period movie. It’s set in 1998. And no amount of blood can detract from the overwhelming endearment Aronofsky has for ’90s New York.

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!”

Hank is far from the first regular guy to be ensnared in underground crime syndicates, but there are a number of things that distinguish “Caught Stealing.” First, his troubles stem, like they do for so many New Yorkers, from his neighbor. Russ (Matt Smith), the mohawked Brit punk who lives next door, rushes out to fly to London, and he leaves Hank his cat to take care of.

Soon, though, a pair of Russian gang skinheads (Yuri Kolokolnikov, Nikita Kukushkin) are banging on Russ’ door and quickly after, pummeling Hank, too. Their beating of Hank is unexpectedly brutal, and the first sign that “Caught Stealing” is going for something a little different. When Hank wakes up in the hospital, he’s down a kidney and told he can’t drink alcohol ever again.

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.

Meanwhile, the Russian mob interest continues to spiral, drawing in a police detective (Regina King, always good), the skinheads’ boss, Colorado (Bad Bunny), and a pair of Orthodox Jewish brothers (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio). The question that keeps coming up is whether Hank can hack it in this world. Is he a killer? He doesn’t think so, even though he has killed. As King’s detective says, “I thought maybe you played real ball.”

For Butler, the role flashes his talent better than “Elvis” ever did. Aronofsky captures the sweet kid in him, with the hint of something a little more. If it once appeared that Butler might be trapped in his breakthrough role, “Caught Stealing” shows how he can carry a movie in a much less adorned performance.

For Aronofsky, little in his recent filmography ( “The Whale,” “Mother!”) suggested that an “After Hours”-like New York odyssey was coming next from him. It’s a little shaggy and you’ll occasionally yearn for a bit more humor along the way. But “Caught Stealing,” based on Charlie Huston’s 2004 novel, is a ride, foremost, in ’90s nostalgia.

The looming Twin Towers are a regular reminder that this was a long time ago, indeed, even if the New York of Aronofsky’s movie seems achingly familiar to some of us. That goes for places the movie rushes past, like Kim’s Video and Shea Stadium, the Alphabet City bars of the film and the now-bygone concerns of cell phone minutes running low. Hank has another neighbor, too, whom he and Yvonne mock for how he describes his job as “building websites.”

Late summer is always a funny time in movie theaters, but that goes especially for this year. We’ve somehow had not one but two excellent New York movies, both rich in baseball fandom, in “Caught Stealing” and Spike Lee’s “Highest 2 Lowest.” Hollywood seemingly has little idea what to do with genre movies from auteur filmmakers that aren’t obvious awards fodder. These are movies that might not be home runs, but their directors most definitely stretch them for extra bases.

“Caught Stealing,” a Columbia Pictures release is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality/nudity and brief drug use. Running time: 107 minutes. Three stars out of four.