Indie auteur David Gordon Green makes his first misstep, but god bless him for his ambition. After establishing his unhurried lyrical style in George Washington and All the Real Girls, Green brings the same style to bear on the Southern Gothic story at the heart of Undertow. Unfortunately, it's the type of story that begs to be hurried along a bit.

Billy Elliot star Jamie Bell plays Chris, the gangly elder son of a widowed pig farmer (Dermot Mulroney) who lives in a shack with his boys deep in the poverty-stricken South. In a gripping opening sequence that should've set the pace for the film, Green shows Chris running away from the shotgun-wielding father of a girl he likes, at one point jumping off a roof and landing on a nail-spiked board, then running with the board stuck painfully to his foot. Green styles this sequence like the opening credits of a 1970s cop show, freeze-framing on Chris as he leaps over a fence and zooming the titles across the screen. It's fast, fun and freaky, qualities that Green has trouble injecting into his main story: the return of the boys' villainous uncle (Josh Lucas) and their subsequent getaway after he destroys their family and tries to steal their inheritance. Green keeps lingering on the details and downbeat emotions of every scene in a misguided bid for authenticity -- the story is just too pulpy to be believed, and all he ends up doing is killing its momentum.