With its interlocked characters and meaningless pop culture conversations spliced with violence, "Nicotina" wants badly to be the Mexican "Pulp Fiction." 

Problem is, we already have a Mexican "Pulp Fiction." It's called "Amores Perros" (2000), and it's not only about 30 times better than "Nicotina," but it's even close in quality level to Quentin Tarantino's original. "Nicotina," stodgy with its forced hipness, will have to settle for being known as a Mexican "8 Heads in a Duffel Bag." 

Like a room full of stale secondhand smoke, "Nicotina," the latest from "Amores Perros" producer Martha Sosa Elizondo, wears its influences like a Halloween costume - as more of a make-believe mask than tailored clothing. Elizondo, working with director Hugo Rodríguez, squanders some of her street cred with an exercise in forced cool. 

The overly complicated crime story unravels in real time, more or less rotating around the focus of Lolo (Diego Luna), a chain-smoking computer hacker who splits his time getting involved with dirty business dealings and spying on his neighbors, mainly Andrea (Marta Belaustegui), a hot but snotty concert cellist who wants to marry her way into a prestigious international orchestra. 

Lolo relies on his partners, Nene (Lucas Crespi) and Tomson (Jesús Ochoa), to broker a deal with Russian mobsters, but they spend more time quibbling over cigarettes' role in lung cancer. 

The story spreads out like an amoeba, encircling other characters and exposing their buried connections. The writing is sometimes crisp and effective, but it too often deflates into tiresomely repetitive shtick. More often than not, the jokes are made at the expense of those who want to smoke but cannot for some reason. 

Also involved are not one but two sets of bickering couples who work together. Barbers Carmen (Rosa María Bianchi) and her henpecked husband, Goyo (Rafael Inclán), tangle over Goyo's lack of monetary discipline, and pharmacists Beto (Daniel Giménez Cacho) and Clara (Carmen Madrid) clash over health-code violations and professionalism issues. Beto likes to smoke on the job, but Clara won't let him. 

Yep, there's the smoking thing again. 

"Nicotina" is most frustrating for its mediocrity in spite of the obvious talent involved. Luna, in particular, is creepily endearing, and Bianchi seems to be in her element going over the top as a shrewish money-grubber who at one point ends up morbidly digging into a mobster's corpse. 

Rodríguez, directing his second feature, proves adept at pacing and comic timing, as well as nifty visual stunts, such as lining a segment of the screen in a box, then zooming in to reveal a clue. 

With a livelier script and without a production mandate chaining him to a tired formula, the filmmaker could join the lead pack of high-flying directors from south of the border. Maybe he'll even get a "Harry Potter" movie someday. Just don't let the guy try to make another "Pulp Fiction."

In Nicotina Mexico City plays the role of urban metropolis where everything is possible. The computer age has taken over, danger lurks around every corner, and the Russian Mafia has a seat in this theater of the absurd.

Diego Luna plays the ultimate computer geek, capable of breaking into Swiss bank accounts and planting cameras in his hot neighbor's apartment to spy on her. Awkward and lacking in social graces, even when he runs like a nerd down the streets of Mexico City, he's even more hilarious given his heartthrob status (along with Gael Garcia Bernal, his companion from Amores Perros).

As for the title Nicotina, almost everyone smokes, except for the ones who are trying to quit or the ones who bemoan secondhand smoke. The characters, like the title, are all on edge. Smoking becomes a catalyst for a philosophical conversation about all the different ways there are to die. Sure there's cancer, but most will die a lot more quickly—especially in this film. And whether dying from an addiction to cigarettes or the desire to get rich quickly, the end result is the same, isn't it?

Violence is highly stylized and some grotesquely humorous sequences take place. A la Tarantino, people are suddenly blown to smithereens, ceasing to exist in the middle of the pulsating action. When the hairdresser gets hold of the Russian, believing he has hidden the diamonds in his stomach, all of the bile humans are composed of comes out, revealing an ugly character that will jump on any opportunity available, at whatever cost to decency and dignity. But it's also funny and that's where the charm of the film lies.