Had it been released, say, in 1996, one could call writer-director Christopher McQuarrie's debut, The Way of the Gun, a worthy slice of postmodern cinematic pulp fiction in the tradition of Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects (which McQuarrie wrote), and, um, Pulp Fiction. The fact that it's appearing now, with the memory of so many bad Pulp Fiction knockoffs resonating in the head like a horrific hangover, makes it a little easier to resist than it ought to be. Too bad, because while Gun is hardly perfect, it is, at the very least, authentic and smart. And what a lurid little plot it has, too: A couple of drifting dirtbags (Ryan Phillippe and Benicio Del Toro) plot to kidnap a very pregnant young woman (Juliette Lewis) who's been hired to surrogate-mother a child for a local shady bigwig. The bigwig's as much of a viper as the two dirtbags — and the bigwig's associates (Taye Diggs, Nicky Katt, and James Caan among them) are similarly reptilian, which sets the stage for all manner of unpleasantness. The kidnapping-a-pregnant-woman conceit will no doubt elicit some tsk-tsking of the "is nothing sacred?" variety, but this isn't exactly new territory; back in the '50s, similarly distasteful scenarios were profitably mined by the likes of pulp crime novelist Jim Thompson, whose best work — the books The Killer Inside Me and The Getaway (made into a grimy actioner by director Sam Peckinpah in 1972), or the dialogue for Stanley Kubrick's immortal 1956 The Killing — deliver a real head rush of perdition.

That's what McQuarrie goes for here, and he gets the genuine article more often than he stumbles. But like a lot of smart guys who feel some residual guilt over their jones for sensationalism, McQuarrie doesn't give free reign to his basest storytelling instincts. His superb cast often lingers over dialogue that can only transcend its inherent absurdity if it's spat out tommy-gun style. But sometimes the languid pacing helps illuminate the characters; I like how the bigwig's trophy wife (Kristin Lehman) desultorily picks at a shrimp cocktail, letting a good half of each succulent prawn go to waste. Moments like these, and the well-staged shoot-out that caps the film, go a long way in making up for Gun's missteps. It's a film out of its time, but for moviegoers who share McQuarrie's taste &$151; and we know who we are — such stuff is eternal.