Christopher McQuarrie first came to the attention of the mainstream movie-going public with his Oscar-winning screenplay for 1995's "The Usual Suspects," a superbly conceived and executed psychological whodunit masquerading as a crime thriller.

For his directorial debut and first script since then, McQuarrie serves up "The Way of the Gun," another tricky, darkly humorous thriller with noir underpinnings.

The talented Benicio Del Toro and the impossibly photogenic Ryan Phillippe star as a pair of pseudonymed, amoral low-lifes bent on finding "the fortune that was waiting for (them)." This fortune comes conveniently packaged in the form of the very pregnant and singularly annoying Juliette Lewis, who seems like she was put on earth for the sole purpose of playing mentally-retarded white trash.

Lewis is the paid surrogate mother for the child of a rich entrepreneur and his shrewish wife and is under 24-hour watch by a pair of ruthless hit men/bodyguards. After kidnapping Lewis and making a run for the border, Phillippe and Del Toro realize that they have kidnapped the unborn child of a mob-connected, possibly supremely-evil and certainly determined entrepreneur, who is resolutely dedicated to the recovery of his child - with or without the surrounding mother and bystanders.