The meaning of the movie title Caught Stealing refers to baseball, and stealing a base; and it’s a sports equivalent of creating something from what should have been nothing or a routine play turned into something spectacular. In this Darren Aronofsky film, it’s his love poem to the late 1990s New York City and the Lower East Side. It’s where Aronofsky began his film career, and contextually, the film occupies the cinema territory of Quentin Tarantino, of Elmore Leonard’s world of cops and grifters. In this particular case, it’s Aronofsky showing us the common man, your everyday guy, caught in circumstances where he’s out of his depth - and how he faces adversity. The film opens Sept. 10 in cinemas.

Mind you, this is the same director who gave us Black Swan, Mother!, and The Whale - so, more than crime stories, we’ve come to expect psychological realism with surreal episodes from Darren. The film is based on an early Charlie Huston crime novel, and Huston himself provides the screenplay. So at first glance, it may seem like a departure from Aronofsky’s usual subject matter and style, but be forewarned, this is a great, effective tribute to the genre, and it doesn’t take long before we’re hooked into the story and investing in what will happen to Hank Thompson (Austin Butler).

Hank is the baseball prospect who went sour, due to an accident that we get glimpses of in fragmented flashbacks. Originally from the West Coast and a Giants fan, he’s basically run away from his reality and has ended up tending bar in Manhattan. It’s 1998, and a punk rock neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith), asks Hank to babysit his cat while he flies back to England due to his father’s failing health. Medic Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) is the one bright thing in Hank’s alcohol-induced lifestyle. It’s this housekeeping of a cat that leads Hank down a crazy rabbit hole, as Russ has been dealing with Russian mobsters, with dirty cops, and has run afoul of a duo of Hasidic enforcers/brothers. Coping with these mobsters, then encountering the Hasidic pair, is like jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

So what we get is a petty crime caper that’s visceral, violent, and at times, hard to watch because the images are stark and bloody. At the same time, there’s a lot of dark humor and compassion. For those who are into cats, the feline creature that Russ entrusts to Hank manages to steal almost every scene she is in.

The sense of time and location is done really well - a pre-gentrified Lower East Side, of bums, winos, and struggling musicians, where you pass days in a haze of alcohol and drugs. The screenplay is excellent, constantly pulling the rug out from under us in terms of plot developments and character quirks.

The ones who seem to be having the most fun with their portrayals are Matt Smith as a punk rocker and the pair of Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio as the Hasidic brothers/enforcers. Stay for the end credits and see who cameo's as Hank’s mother, the one he keeps calling to check how she is.

Several big-name auteur directors seem to have taken on projects that would suggest they’ve entered their Pulp Fiction stage. A couple will be released later in the year, but this early, I’ll say that this Aronofsky one will easily stand as one of the better ones. And it’s the cat that will win you over! Best watched with friends!