Caught in a familiar ‘Undertow’

With “Undertow,” David Gordon Green remains the compelling filmmaker of his distinctive first feature, “George Washington.” However, in his third feature -- his second, “All the Real Girls,” afforded Zooey Deschanel a breakthrough role -- his gift for texture and atmosphere and for expressing the world through the eyes of youthful, marginalized antagonists is wedded somewhat uneasily to a conventional plot.

In short, “Undertow,” though refreshingly offbeat in tone, is a familiar example of an idiosyncratic filmmaker, a master at evoking moods and yearnings, who leaves his viewers to connect the dots. The result is a movie that doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts, yet some of those parts connect deeply anyway.

Green, who is drawn to the derelict side streets and habitats of the American South, sets up “Undertow” with subtlety. Rugged John Munn (Dermot Mulroney), after the death of his wife, has retreated to an isolated hardscrabble hog farm, where he is raising his two sons and doing some taxidermy on the side. John is demanding of his older son, Chris (Jamie Bell), in his mid-teens, partly because his younger son, Tim (Devon Alan), is not quite 10 and partly because the boy is sickly.

This constant pressure serves only to make Chris rebellious and prone to getting into scrapes with the law. “Nobody listens, nobody cares how you feel,” Chris laments, clearly referring to his loving but hard-line, still grieving father.

In other words, life for the Munns is already precarious when John’s brother Deel (Josh Lucas) shows up fresh out of prison. Well-built, sexy and possessed of a wild streak, Deel at first sight telegraphs big trouble ahead.

As it happens John has good reason to cut his brother some slack despite buckets of bad blood between them. That Deel is so obviously dangerous from the get-go doesn’t allow Green to build much suspense.

At any rate, disaster sure enough occurs, and Chris and Tim are on the lam with Deel in pursuit. The boys are carrying with them a purported fortune in gold coins that their father regards as cursed. Green also invokes myth with a tale that each coin pays for a ferry ride across the River Styx.

The heart of the film and its key strength is the loving relationship that develops between Chris and Tim and their encounters with others during their backwoods flight. A certain predictability is perhaps inescapable at the film’s climax, and Green opts for one of those enigmatic, take-your-choice finishes that seems fashionable rather than satisfying. “Undertow” suggests an irony -- that if Green were a less talented filmmaker, he would likely be better able to swim into the mainstream.

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‘Undertow’

MPAA rating: R for violence

Jamie Bell...Chris

Josh Lucas...Deel

Devon Alan...Tim

Dermot Mulroney...John

A United Artists and Contentfilm presentation of a Sunflower production. Director David Gordon Green. Producers Lisa Muskat, Terrence Malick, Edward R. Pressman. Executive producers John Schmidt, Alessandro Camon. Screenplay by Gordon Green and Joe Conway, story by Lingard Jervey. Cinematographer Tim Orr. Editors Zene Baker, Steve Gonzales. Music Philip Glass. Costumes Jill Newell. Production designer Richard A. Wright. Set decorator Summer Eubanks. Running time: 1 hour, 57 minutes.

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