Quentin Tarantino may be stumped these days when it comes to making movies, but his second- and third-rate imitators sure aren't. Add to that list of neo-noir wanna-bes Steven Baigelman, whose debut, Feeling Minnesota, is a misconceived and annoyingly executed fusion of Pulp Fiction and The Brothers McMullen. The inexplicable Keanu Reeves adds to his Johnny Mnemonic roster of atrocious oddities this portrayal of Jjaks (the faux-whimsical spelling is typical of the film's tweeness), a loser outshone in the family's eyes by his porcine brother Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio), an accountant in a strip joint run by small-town mobster Red (the magnificent Delroy Lindo, misused again). Jjaks gets back at Sam by running off with his wife, Freddie (Cameron Diaz).

What follows is an implausible and overwrought series of hysterical encounters and unlikely twists, with the requisite double and triple crosses that are satisfying only because all the characters are so unsympathetic. Baigelman's idea of style and originality is to be overbearing; if he really wanted to know what Minnesota felt like, he should have checked out the Coen brothers' brilliant Fargo. At the Copley Place, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle and in the suburbs.