If Pulp Fiction impregnated The Usual Suspects, the spawn would look a lot like Lucky Number Slevin. Great genes, but you keep wondering when the kid is going to grow up and find an identity of his own. Fractured story lines fight for prominence as Slevin (Josh Hartnett) hits New York and winds up being mistaken for a friend that two crime kingpins, the Rabbi (Ben Kingsley) and the Boss (Morgan Freeman), want to see dead. Ironically, they both hire the same hit man, Goodkat (Bruce Willis persuasively doing Bruce Willis), to off him. Hartnett plays half the film clad only in a towel, a distraction for Lindsey (Lucy Liu), the girl next door, not to mention critics — straight and gay — who might otherwise find fault with his acting. Actually, the performances are juicy, with Freeman and Kingsley hamming it up royally during a double-torture scene. But that's getting too deep into the plot, which is the film's downfall. Director Paul McGuigan (Wicker Park) keeps the blood splashing. But the convoluted ain't-I-clever script by Jason Smilovic has a cheat ending that makes you want to do a little torturing yourself. Don't you hate it when that happens?

Peter Travers' new book, "1,000 Best Movies on DVD" is available now.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.