Recommended

PROP GUN: Guy Pearce aims for the heart.

With all this buzzing in the background, the British Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) has his work cut out for him. Declaring his intention "to civilize this land," he first appears in the middle of that effort, as he and his deputies assault a house where two Irish brothers, Charlie (Guy Pearce) and Mike Burns (Richard Wilson), are holed up. Wanted for the killing of a "good Christian family"—and especially, the pre-murder rape of a pregnant member of that family—the brothers are soon taken prisoner.

Several bodies lean broken and bloodied against the hideout's walls, as dull sunlight filters through dozens of bullet holes. Stanley peers at his captives, then walks to a window. Looking out, he ponders, "What fresh hell is this?" which might refer equally to the carnage behind him, the desertscape before him or the roiling forces within him. For in order to bring order, he knows now that he must become his opponent. The means to civilization, and its end, is violence, whether brutal or sly.

Having tasted the brutal part, Stanley wrangles a sly bargain with Charlie. The leader of the Burns gang, Arthur (Danny Huston)—whom Stanley calls "a monster, an abomination"—remains at large; Charlie, apparently appalled by the gang's latest atrocity, has decamped along with young, slow-witted Mikey. Stanley offers this impossible deal: If Charlie kills Arthur, the captain will spare Mikey, now scheduled to be hanged in nine days, on Christmas. It's a terrible deal, and everyone knows it. Their mutual agreement is based on distrust and contempt, much like the "civilization" Stanley has in mind.

It's not as if he's come up with it on his own. Much as he resembles his sweaty prisoners and filthy, low-thinking deputies, Stanley has another, more officially sanctioned side, embodied most plainly by his wife, Martha (Emily Watson). For the most part, she keeps to the nice white house they've got on the edge of town, where she's surrounded with remnants of a life they had before: china plates, heavy draperies, polished chairs. But just after Stanley returns to the jailhouse, Mikey in tow, Martha shows up, demanding attention, complaining of loneliness and boredom. She's been waiting for three days, after all.

When she judges the prisoner to be "no more than a boy"—that is, undeserving of the obvious beating he's received—Stanley sends her away. He's protecting her, but also himself, maintaining his own sense of order, his sense of his wife as the woman who waits for him at home, safe and unbearably sensual. But not before Sergeant Lawrence (Robert Morgan) declares the prisoner "man enough." Startled into contemplating what this means—what it suggests about her husband's judgment, daily activities, and means to get to his ends—Martha blanches. And when she's gone, Stanley sets parameters with the deputy: "What happened in the flats is between you and me," he asserts. "Because if it were to become known, there would be consequences."

Indeed. Stanley feels this threat especially from his twitty superior, Fletcher (David Wenham), who rides into town wearing a suit and decrees punishments knowing he'll have nothing to do with their execution. As soon as Stanley learns Fletcher wants to have Mikey flogged in public, the captain understands the cycle of retribution will only go on. That Martha becomes an eager party to the cycle (at least initially) emphasizes its insidious endlessness, like the buzz: The world always offers fresh hell, never old and never over.

Charlie's sense of consequences is more skewed but just as acute. He knows that Arthur, who essentially incarnates the cycle, is unkillable. His route to Arthur's cave in the hills (where he's rumored among local aborigines to have transformed himself into a dog) takes him through the bounty hunter Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), whose self-hate and loathing for others (aborigines, Irishmen, criminals) spills out in an anti-Darwin rant. Lamb seeks Arthur too, for the money and the sport.

While Charlie's aim (to save Mikey) might appear to be less objectionable, the film's circuitous, implacable events—less a plot than an accumulation of horrors—suggests that intention is, at last, irrelevant. Like Fletcher and Martha's desire to see Mikey bloodied for his crime, Arthur's craving for vengeance and Stanley's for security are naive but also relentless, cultural values that only undermine culture.

The Proposition Directed by John Hillcoat A First Look release Opens Friday at Ritz at the Bourse