Undertow is a thriller directed by David Gordon Green. Anyone who has ever seen a David Gordon Green film may wonder how a director with such gentle, languid sesnsibilities could make a thriller; they will go see the film, and it will instantly make sense. This is how David Gordon Green makes a thriller, and that's that, and if you like Green's style you will most definitely be thrilled.

Green made two films before this one: George Washington, which I think is one of the greatest American independent films ever made, and All The Real Girls, which was a beautiful piece of work that couldn't help but pale in the shadow of its predecessor. Both films were meandering documents of the lives of young people, with plots that were barely there and a sense of heightened naturalism that was like some sort of alternate dimension between cinema verite and more traditional filmmaking. Here, working for the first time from a story he didn't come up with (the script is credited to Green and Joe Conway), he foregoes a little of his fondness for lackadaisical plotting. But only a little.

The film is set in the deep green South, far away from the big cities. Like all his films, the time period is entirely indefinite, and what we see could be taking place 50 years ago just as easily as it could be taking place now. The first thing he shows us is young Chris Munn (Jamie Bell) embracing his girlfriend Lila (Kristen Stewart). They kiss like teenagers who don't know how to kiss might kiss. "I want to carve my name on your cheek," Lila tells Chris, and that's the kind of thing someone who doesn't know how to express their feelings might think; in Green's world, they go ahead and say it and it sounds completely natural.

Chris Munn lives in a rustic cabin with his father John (Dermot Mulroney) and younger brother Tim (Devon Alan). John loves them both, although he perhaps favors Tim with special distinction; he doesn't make him do chores, the way he does Chris, and though he points out Tim's various ailments (he frequently throws up) as cause enough, there's a sense that he the bonds between the father, eldest and youngest son are not equal. His wife, their mother, is long dead, and their memories of her faded. John wants better for his boys, but at the same time seems content with their life of work and solitude; Chris, though, is restless, and young Tim's admirable resilience does not hide his maladjustment.

Into their driveway one day pulls Deel (Josh Lucas), John's younger brother. He never completely explains his reason for visiting, nor does it ever appear to be completely amiable. John, in his quiet good natured way, invites his brother to stay with them, and asks him if he wouldn't mind keeping the boys out of trouble. Deel does stay; he doesn't keep an eye on them; he does plant notions in their heads, about their parents; and he asks questions, questions someone like Tim is too naive to realize the implication of. Questions about gold coins, inherited from Deel and John's father, who supposedly inherited them from Charon, ferryman of the River Styx; gold coins that Deel wants his share of and that John insists he does not have.

John does have them, of course, and the reasons he doesn't want Deel to know about them and the manner in which Deel takes them are not the type of things you need to read about in a review. What I will reveal is that Chris and Tim end up on the run through the countryside with the coins in their possession and Deel in pursuit. It is not a fast-paced chase; it proceeds as it might in real life, if two intelligent boys had only to evade one man and had an entire overgrown rural world to do it in. There are moments of intensity, but there are also scenes where there is no danger and therefore no need to rush or even run, where the boys loll along the banks of the river, talking about chiggers. These are precisely the lyrical sort of moments Green previously proved his mastery in.

Here he weaves his manner of turning passing time into poetry into a deceptively mythic narrative, one that evokes in its devotion to the landscape and the people, while not forsaking the grander themes at hand, the best works of Faulkner. The central triumvirate of Chris, Tim and Deel is inclusive of the most classic of conflicts: father and son, son and brother. But those themes are expertly diluted by the pace of the narrative and the people encountered throughout the journey: here a kindly husband and wife unable to have children of their own, here a homeless girl who is to proud to be good and too good be unkind.

Green has been quoted as saying that a film's quality is 99% due to its cast, and indeed, that's a fitting statement from a director who draws such impressive performances from his casts. He's especially gifted when working with younger actors. Devon Alan is a new face, but you may feel like you recognize him from George Washington or All The Real Girls. You will will recognize Jamie Bell -- or, at least, you'll recognize his name from when he starred in Billy Elliot a few years ago. He's taller now, bulkier, nearly an adult and every bit the presence he was in that great crowd pleaser. British born, he affects a flawless Southern accent; Green was on hand at the screening I attended, and explained that Bell mastered the accent in every way except when it came to double O's - so they just got rid of every one of those words in the script and he was good to go.

Dermot Mulroney is good too, and Josh Lucas, with his steely blue eyes, is electrifying. His character is not all that unlike Robert Mitchum's in Charles Laughton's The Night Of The Hunter, which was an obvious influence on this film. There are also marks that could be attributed to 70s exploitation films (the opening credits in particular) and, as always, Green's idol Terrence Malick (who actually is a producer here), and yet it every frame is unmistakably Green's. Like Quentin Tarantino (a filmmaker who in every other aspect he is the polar opposite of), Green takes his influences and makes them his own. He's one of the most greatest young filmmakers working today; Undertow, like his first two films, is a masterpiece.