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'Caught Stealing': Crime Travel.

Darren Aronofsky's new movie, "Caught Stealing," is set in 1998, the same year the director made his feature-film debut with the raw, grimy "Pi." Like that one, the new movie feels plugged directly into a rough, tabloid version of New York City, one that no longer entirely exists. Leading us around Manhattan's scrabbly Lower East Side, he resurrects the period squalor -- sidewalks piled high with mounds of black-bagged garbage -- and long-gone hipster landmarks like Kim's Video. Very late one night he takes us to a grubby neighborhood bar where a young bartender is reminding patrons, above the throb of the house jukebox, that no dancing is allowed. (Dancing in NYC bars actually was prohibited back then, by a cabaret law that remained in effect until 2018.) "Blame Giuliani," the bartender says, citing the beloved/detested mayor of that vintage moment.

The bartender's name is Hank Thompson (Austin Butler), and this is his life. It's not going anywhere, pretty clearly. Once upon a time, Hank was a high-school baseball star with a serious shot at a major-league career. That dream was snatched away from him, though, and now he spends his nights sliding beers across the bar and sharing snuggles with his girlfriend, a sweet paramedic named Yvonne (Zoe Kravitz). He's also pals with one of the neighbors in his apartment-house, a toweringly mohawked Brit drug dealer named Russ, and it's Russ' cat who nudges the plot into action.

Russ has to go back to England for a bit -- to pick up a change of bondage pants and some fresh Doc Martens, probably -- and Hank agrees to cat-sit for him. Immediately things get weird. First a squad of Russian thugs shows up looking for the absent Russ. Before long, they're joined by a Puerto Rican gangster called Colorado (rapper Bad Bunny, vividly amusing) and an odd pair of Jewish brothers with big Hasidic beards and trademark fedoras (Liev Schreiber and Vincent D'Onofrio). Inevitably, an NYPD detective also starts nosing around: Her name is Roman (Regina King), and she has a keen interest in the drug business, of which she's pretty sure Hank is a part. All of these characters also share an interest in the movie's MacGuffin, a small key, which is of course missing.

The movie is generous with its violence -- one character loses a kidney, another loses her mind (you might say), and there's a gunfire fiesta at a Russian nightclub that should keep connoisseurs of such stuff content at least until they get home. Butler once again projects a charmingly underplayed star power -- he doesn't get to express much, but you're always glad to have him on hand as the calm center of the movie's action. And he couldn't ask for a more colorfully supportive cast than the one Aronofsky has assembled for him here.

All of that said, the movie is undermined by its uncertain tone. It's not completely a comedy, and it's not a full-on action exercise either. The brothers played by Schreiber and D'Onofrio seem like models for a pair of amiable bumblers, but they're cold-blooded hit men and we witness them practicing their brutal trade and we can't unsee it even when they take Hank to the home of their doting mother (Carol Kane) for a possibly too-cute infusion of matzah ball soup. Since the movie is based on the first in a series of Hank Thompson novels by Charlie Huston (who also wrote the script), maybe Aronofsky (or someone else) will get to tighten up the concept in a sequel.

To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.

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