This is the story of how a man saves a cat. What’s remarkable is this man claims to prefer dogs, and even more remarkable is that this man and this cat happen to be pursued by a pair of Russian mafia enforcers, a Puerto Rican gangster, a corrupt cop and two Hasidic assassins. No easy feat.

Our hero, Hank (Austin Butler) comes into this cat, Bud, thanks to his neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith), in the hallway of their derelict walk-up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A London punk in a Mohawk, spikes and leather, Russ implores Hank to feed Bud while he’s visiting family in England for a few days. Hank, just returning home from closing down the dive bar where he slings drinks, his maybe/maybe not girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) on his arm, is in no position to say no. But it’s Bud — and Russ — who get Hank into a whole lot of trouble.

“Caught Stealing” is director Darren Aronofsky blowing off a little steam, and it’s about time the director had some fun. Aronofsky is known for his serious fare and body-breaking psychological dramas like “The Whale,” “Black Swan” and “The Wrestler,” and fantasy epics like “Noah” and “The Fountain.” The harrowing drug saga “Requiem for a Dream” has traumatized young cinephiles for decades, and we’re still puzzling over “Mother!,” so this romp about a bartender inadvertently caught up in a drug ring is a veritable lark for Aronofsky, even if it is brutally violent to boot.

Adapted from the 2004 novel by Charlie Huston and adapted by the author too, “Caught Stealing,” set in 1998, is rife with a deep sense of nostalgia for the louche, grimy environs of Lower Manhattan in the late ‘90s, where phones were connected to the wall and websites were just what your neighbor claimed to be building for a bank. Maybe everyone’s just nostalgic for a time like that right now, and there’s no better feeling than sinking into the authentic facsimile of 1998 New York that Aronofsky offers up, especially when our avatars, Hank and Yvonne, are two of the most scorchingly hot people in this or any era.

Aronofsky opens with a sizzlingly lusty scene between the couple, filled with playful banter and genuine chemistry, before ripping it away when two Russian thugs (Yuri Kolokolnikov and Nikita Kukushkin) come calling at Russ’ apartment. Hank bumbles into them, and for his trouble, he loses a kidney, courtesy of a rough beating. That coincidental run-in sets off the whole plot, wherein Hank does nothing wrong (except get blackout drunk one night) but still finds a monsoon of terror rained down upon his meager existence.

Hank feels like he deserves it though, for mistakes in his past life. Yvonne warns him that she won’t get serious if he’s “running from something,” but no hard-drinking, washed-up high school baseball star 3,000 miles from home isn’t running from something, living as a New York City nocturnal animal.

In flashback, we see that Hank’s bum knee and sense of guilt come from a teenage car accident; if anything, the business with the murderous drug dealers helps him work out if he’s a “killer” or not (yes and no). By the way, don’t actually try to work out the business, which is explained by Smith in rapid-fire cockney delivered while in transit. All you need to know is that there’s money, and the people with guns want it.

This late ‘90s-set film also evokes the cinema of the late ‘90s: smirking, stylized crime capers directed by Aronofsky contemporaries like Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie. The violence is frequent and meaningless to most everyone — except for Hank, with Butler emoting at every killing. He conveys wounded quite well, and proves his star power and range beyond the other starring roles in which he’s disappeared, like Elvis Presley, Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in “Dune: Part Two,” or Benny in “The Bikeriders.” Here, he’s just a guy, caught up in something bigger than he ever expected, and he has to get up to speed real fast.

Butler — and Kravitz — elevate the material beyond its exploitation movie influences. While there are a few glaring, hackneyed storytelling twists, and the brutality grates, it’s a pleasure to watch Butler in motion: sprinting through the streets, dangling from a windowsill, sliding under carts, as cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s gloriously airborne camera goes swooping and soaring around him. Much of the movie is about Hank’s physicality, in pain or in ecstasy, and Butler delivers.

Aronofsky has always been an actor’s director, and even though he’s playing in the pulp sandbox with “Caught Stealing,” he lets Butler shine. There are a few choices to side-eye in the script, to be sure, but Butler, Kravitz and Libatique are unimpeachable on this wild ride.

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'CAUGHT STEALING'

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong violent content, pervasive language, some sexuality/nudity and brief drug use)

Running time: 1:47

How to watch: In theaters Aug. 29

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