In the Australian Outback – presumably of the 1880s – two outlaws, half-witted Mikey (Richard Wilson) and his bushranger brother Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce), are captured in a bloody shootout with the authorities.

Proclaiming “I will civilise this place” almost as if he’s trying to convince himself, the local lawman, Captain Stanley (the terrific Ray Winstone) presents Charlie with a proposition. If he can find his notorious brother Arthur before Christmas and kill him, Mikey will be spared the hangman’s noose, and they’ll both receive pardons.

Played by Danny Huston, the sleazy attaché from The Constant Gardener, Arthur is described as “a monster, an abomination” and is blamed for the killing of a settler family, including the rape and murder of a pregnant woman. He’s believed to be hiding in Queensland, a forbidding territory populated by hostile Aborigines that Stanley’s troops refuse to enter. Charlie accepts the deal.

Written by Nick Cave, a prolific Australian rock musician, composer and author who finished his first attempt at a screenplay in three weeks, and directed with epic aspirations by John Hillcoat, The Proposition starts out beautifully. Weathered yellow photographs from the 19^th century go by as “There Is A Happy Land” fills the soundtrack, sung by a child and accompanied by an old-time fiddle.

Hillcoat throws us right into a siege with a harshness ripped from the playbook of Sam Peckinpah. We’re treated to Pearce and Winstone – two of the strongest male presences working in film today – squaring off against each other. French director of photography Benoit Delhomme’s lighting in anamorphic widescreen is also powerful, with exterior shots that seem to bend under the intense heat of the Outback.

Added in this mix is the novel concept of an Australian western, with Aborigine “blacks” substituted for Indians, and the inclusion of Emily Watson (playing Winstone’s wife) and John Hurt, playing a poetry spouting English bounty hunter, in the Olympic cast.

All this potential evaporates seven minutes into the film. Once Pearce sets off on his rugged journey and the story should kick in, it becomes clear neither Cave nor Hillcoat are up for any heavy lifting. Yes, there are outstanding performances, strong images and interesting ideas floating around here, but they meander along at the service of an allegorical western or even worse, an art film. Larry McMurtry this ain’t.

There’s too much of Emily Watson and the strained domestic scenes she has to play out, and not nearly enough of Pearce, Huston (a son of director John Huston’s) and John Hurt dueling against the Outback. These are desperate men wandering in a bitter landscape, but Cave is most keen on having them stare off into sunsets and ponder their existence.

In fact, I really hated this movie. It had so much going for it, but the script doesn’t have the weight to follow through on its promise. There’s still a great Australian western to be made about how the country was settled, and the role of its convicts, outlaws and bushrangers in that history. But avoid watching this one unless you want to be bored out of your mind.