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

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