Hear the wind blow through "Down in the Valley" : It's an ill gale, the wind of memory and illusion, the wind of ugly violence, the wind of domestic turbulence.

David Jacobson's harsh, possibly twisted but always mesmerizing little film begins with America's fondest dream -- the cowboy. He's lean and lanky, calls everybody "sir" or "ma'am" and looks you straight on when he shakes your hand. Any adult would see the other thing: He's also a psycho.

But no 15-year-old can, like Tobe (the luminous, dangerous Evan Rachel Wood), and when she meets Harlan Carruthers (Edward Norton) in a gas station off the freeway in the valley called San Fernando, she is taken.

Connoisseurs of Norton's career will immediately associate this tour de force performance with Norton's first film role, the Oscar-nominated turn in "Primal Fear." It's that same trick: the mild, decent exterior, the anonymous face, the unassertive body language, the small, still mouth, the diffident body posture; but underneath, there might be something else, something darker. Somehow Norton is able to carry these contradictions easily and make them whole.

"Down in the Valley" is exactly what we don't have enough of: It's singular, unusual, unexpected, fresh and familiar at once.

-- Stephen Hunter

Contains extreme violence, profanity and sexuality.