As far as I can judge, the primary complaint about Darren Aronofsky’s generally well-reviewed — though not very popular — new film, Caught Stealing, is that it’s not a typical Darren Aronofsky film.

But that’s exactly what I liked about it. I’ve been a nonfan of Aronofsky’s since Pi put him on the map back in 1998. It’s good to discover so late in the game that Aronofsky can tackle a nice lowdown genre movie and pull it off with a certain élan.

With a script by Charlie Huston adapted from his own novel Caught Stealing is a darkly comic crime film about an alcoholic bartender named Henry “Hank” Thompson (Austin Butler) living in the grimy Lower East Side of New York City in 1998. He’s got a dingy little apartment; a hot girlfriend, Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz); and a passionate love of baseball, especially the San Francisco Giants. He also has a tendency to wake up suddenly from bad nightmares of a youthful car accident that ended his professional baseball playing prospects.

One night, in the wee hours after he closes the bar, Hank comes home and runs into his punked-out Brit neighbor in the next-door apartment, Russ (Matt Smith). Reluctantly agreeing to cat-sit for Russ’s long-haired gray tabby, Bud, seems inconvenient but harmless enough. However, for reasons he can’t initially fathom, Hank soon winds up in the middle of violent rival interests on the hunt for both Russ and a huge stash of drug money. Hank’s first encounter with Russian mobsters leads to a beating that puts him in the hospital. When he gets out, he’s minus one kidney.

That means no more drinking — or that’s what it should mean — but there’s a lot of pressure involved in dodging goons, and alcohol is everywhere at home and at work and at all points in between. Hank hopes to get some help from a tough local cop named Detective Elise Roman (Regina King), but her best advice is to call her if he ever encounters a pair of Hasidic Jewish gangsters called the Drucker brothers, Lipa (Liev Schreiber) and Shmully (Vincent D’Onofrio), because they’re “real monsters.”

Before long, Hank is on the run all over New York — Flushing Meadows, Shea Stadium, Coney Island — either evading or forming temporary alliances with the various factions, including the Drucker brothers, who take him to a Shabbas dinner at the home of their Bubbe (Carol Kane). Nightmarish odysseys through cities are a film noir staple, of course, and might also remind you of Martin Scorsese’s black comedy After Hours (1985), even before you realize that Hank’s wizened, hard-bitten boss is played by the star of that 1985 classic, Griffin Dunne.

Oh, it’s a hell of a cast, with surprising famous faces popping up everywhere.

So I enjoyed Caught Stealing quite a bit. But then, I’m not shocked at the combination of wild violence and broad humor shot through with occasionally surprising poignance. I’ve always been devoted to film noir, my favorite filmmakers are the Coen brothers and I was raised on Looney Tunes. Even with that sterling background, however, I admit there were a few harsh twists in the narrative that I didn’t see coming and were even a bit shocking. But that’s to the movie’s credit, I think.

Caught Stealing is overlong, true, and drags a bit toward the end. But Butler is charming as the hapless alcoholic antihero trying to dredge up new strength of character to face his troubles and show his girlfriend that he’s a guy “who can handle his shit.” Even if it isn’t, technically, his shit — just his neighbor’s shit he got stuck with that soon got mixed in with his own shit.

It’s important to note that the film features a great cat character in Bud, who regards human behavior with wary attentiveness. “He’s a biter,” Hank frequently has to warn people. Hank doesn’t want to cat-sit initially, but when all the violence puts the cat in harm’s way too, Hank quickly finds himself in the role of Bud’s defender and friend.

Forming a friendship with an animal makes sense in the lonely and threatening world of film noir, and if you know the genre properly, you know that cats have played significant roles in a few key films. One is This Gun for Hire (1942), with Alan Ladd’s star-making lead as a cold-blooded hitman who only cares about two creatures in the world, a stray cat he adopts and Veronica Lake as Ellen. Another is The Asphalt Jungle (1950), in which the tough diner owner Gus (James Whitmore), who befriends marginalized criminal characters in need, also cares for an abandoned kitten and throws out one customer who objects. And Robert Altman’s neo-noir The Long Goodbye (1973) features an unforgettable reinterpretation of Raymond Chandler’s famous pulp-fiction detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould), newly incarnated as a hapless 1970s misfit who can’t even get any respect from his cat.

Aronofsky’s New York City of 1998 seems to lean backward toward 1970s movies in its beautifully shot funk, filth, and graffiti, as well as its memorably offbeat characters just struggling to get by. There used to be a lot of ’70s films about people trying to make a big score so they could escape a hopelessly corrupt and depressing life in America, which was the natural fallout of Watergate, the Vietnam War, and the exhaustion following a decade of furious social protest that was fast losing its momentum.

The sad echo of that kind of film in our current cinema makes sense right now.