Maybe I've seen one too many crime flick, or maybe I don't take the right drugs.
This was the most cliché ridden, plot deficient, plot-absurd, just plain stupid movie I have seen in a long time.
As for the direction, it looks like it took less time to show this than it did to put it together.
In fact it looks like to made it straight to video before it was completed.
It's a bad rip off of "M" the classic Fritz Lang film starring Peter Lorre. You'd be SO much better off renting that instead.