Oakland director and hometown hero Boots Riley’s new film, “I Love Boosters,” pays homage to a complicated folk hero: the booster, a neighborhood figure who sells shoplifted goods at a steep discount. The topic feels particularly poignant in the Bay Area, where high-profile smash-and-grabs make headlines and drugstores put toothpaste behind lock and key.

But when asked about how crime trends influenced the film, Riley is quick to question their very premise, citing reporting on how drugstore executives overstated the effects of theft and police unions hire public relations firms to increase the perception of crime when data actually shows declines.

“It’s conspiracy theory, because people do conspire,” he told SFGATE. “What this does is to try to explain the problems of capitalism as the problems of the bad decisions of those impoverished.”

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Dating back to his early work as a community organizer, through his rap career with the Coup and in his first film, “Sorry to Bother You,” and the TV series “I’m a Virgo,” Riley’s work is steeped in political activism. But what makes him such a compelling artist is that all the heady anticapitalist theory — of which there is plenty in “I Love Boosters” — is sneaked into a madcap package that’s as influenced by “Looney Tunes” and Parliament-Funkadelic as it is Karl Marx.

The film, which is inspired by a Coup song from 2006, begins with Corvette (Keke Palmer) and her cohorts in the Velvet Gang targeting a chain of high-end retailers in Oakland called Metro Designers. The brand is helmed by scientist-turned-designer Christie Smith........

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