White Hat, Dark Heart In 'Down in the Valley'

Evan Rachel Wood as a girl taken in by Edward Norton's cowboy. (By Chuck Zlotnick -- Think Film Company)

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. His eyes are blue; he's true, he's steady, a man's man. 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 of "Thirteen") and when she meets Buffalo Bill, no, Wyatt Earp, no again, Harlan Carruthers (Edward Norton) in a gas station off the freeway in the valley called San Fernando, she is taken.

The psychology is transparent. Adrift in the scrubby fast-food and doughnut-shop wilderness that is the San Fernando, Tobe is a latchkey child. Her father, Wade (David Morse), works for the Sheriff's Department. He's not a bad man, but he carries melancholy and repression wherever he goes (lost dreams? a vanished wife? memories of a war he fought in heroically?) and he lashes out in profanity and anger when challenged. So naturally, his daughter challenges him a lot, and the silent witness to this bitter discord is the second sibling, Lonnie (Rory Culkin), upon whose grave face is marked the bitterness of the family's fetid inner life.

So for both Tobe and Lonnie, Harlan is a godsend: He's a man off the screen, idealized, fair, perfect. He listens, he comforts, he adores, and of course, ultimately he seduces and usurps. For Wade, Harlan is the Devil: He sees Harlans everywhere in his professional life, that is, drifters with screws loose, with narcissistic impulses that require them to think far higher of themselves than any accomplishment merits, boy-men who want it all, and fast, thank you.

But Wade, inarticulate and already distanced from the kids by virtue of his harsh temper, can't find a way to express his doubts and fears except via rage, which is hopelessly futile. The more he seethes, the more he drives his kids away to the waiting arms of the seemingly better man, Harlan.

And who is Harlan? Isn't that the interesting question? Connoisseurs of the career of Edward Norton 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 posture; but underneath, there might be something else, something darker. Somehow Norton is able to carry these contradictions easily and make them whole. He's also always, and to his and the movie's benefit, a surprisingly agile, athletic presence. He seems so wan, so ephemeral, so insubstantial -- and then he whip-cracks into action with stunning speed.

The subtext in all this happens to be the western movie, and some of its icons, namely guns. Dad Wade carries a gun, cleans it frequently, and is also a gun collector. Cowboy Harlan has a couple of Colt single-actions -- Jacobson loves the geometry and grace of the old Equalizers -- and a low-hanging speed rig built for fast-draw contests. Rory, like most boys, is drawn to shooting irons, and his father's passion for safety is another source of discord, in contrast to Harlan's openness and willingness to share in the fun of the things. For the record, Norton has become a extremely impressive gun handler. When he draws and shoots, it's clear he's had professional coaching. Memo to Edward Norton: Get yourself into (producing and directing if necessary) a movie on the life and times of that other youngster of speed and violence, Billy the Kid, before you lose your youthful looks. I kept thinking: What a Kid this guy would make! And as much-movied as that tale of New Mexican clan warfare has been, no one's achieved greatness yet.

Anyhow, soon enough Harlan has become Lonnie's best pal and Tobe's lover. He shows them a world they never knew existed. But soon enough also, he shows them oddities of personality that would raise the hackles of any adult: A horse-riding expedition almost turns violent when it's discovered that Harlan stole the horse they're riding. Harlan's mystery is of course ultimately revealed, as is his true nature, and in an impressively light way, Jacobson maneuvers events toward a western make-believe town, where the games of white hats and black hats, of men facing men in streets of mud in front of rows of wooden buildings, will be played for real.

"Down in the Valley" is exactly what we don't have enough of: It's singular, unusual, unexpected, fresh and familiar at once. Maybe too long and maybe cinematographer Enrique Chediak's photography of a natural zone of beauty blighted by Mr. Doughnut and Carl's Jr. lays it on a trifle thick, but it's a surprisingly intense and disturbing movie.

Down in the Valley (117 minutes at Landmark's E Street Cinema and Bethesda Row) is rated R for extreme violence, profanity and sexuality.