Wouldn't it be nice if modern filmmakers watched more Hitchcock and less Tarantino?

"Keys to Tulsa" is yet another violent lowlife comedy, although this one is more lowlife than comedy.

The convoluted, character-heavy plot has Eric Stoltz returning home to Tulsa, Okla., where his mother (Mary Tyler Moore) gets him a job on the local newspaper as a movie critic. (Don't get me started.)

As he begins to become reacquainted with old friends and enemies, Stoltz is drawn into a number of problematic situations, chief among them a blackmail scheme that is tied to his sexy, manipulative former girlfriend (Deborah Kara Unger) and her sleazy, drug-dealing husband (James Spader).

Stoltz also links up with Unger's violent, unpredictable brother (Michael Rooker), a stripper who is involved in the blackmail scheme (Joanna Going), a lawyer with whom Unger is having an affair (Peter Strauss) and a wealthy, powerful town bigshot (James Coburn). (Cameron Diaz also makes a brief appearance — she's gone after the opening scene, though she receives second billing.)

The players are interesting, and occasionally the story line seems to be on the verge of some energy, but despite all the noise and clamor and overheated plot twists, "Keys to Tulsa" never really gets going. There's a lot of talk, a few dramatic confrontations and the inevitable gunplay, along with so many characters referred to by name that I lost track of some of them after awhile.

Writer-director Leslie Greif ("Heaven's Prisoners," "Meet Wally Sparks") also has allowed some racist underpinnings to creep in as his characters refer with some frequency to black people by using a particularly unpleasant epithet. And there aren't any black characters to balance the film, save one — a hooker who is brutally violated and beaten to death.

And since Stoltz's role gives him no stronger a moral base than any of the other slimeballs here, it's hard to care a whole lot about what happens to him in the end. Even he admits aloud a few times that he's being "stupid," as he allows the winds of fate or his own libido to dictate his actions. "Stupid" is an understatement.

There are some solid laughs early on, and if the humor had held up throughout it might have redeemed the picture. But instead, the film just meanders along until it runs completely out of steam.

"Keys to Tulsa" is rated R for violence, sex, nudity, profanity, racist epithets, vulgarity and drugs.