Title and protagonist’s uncommon name notwithstanding, in addition to the director’s 1996 The Burger and the King, about Graceland’s preferred, destructive diet, The King is not about what you’d expect.

More, it is not certain that James Marsh’s first dramatic feature is about anything, although one sincere young lady at the screening I attended found in it a message about retribution for Christian sinners. True, the context is Glad Tidings Ministry Sanctuary, Corpus Christi (Body of Christ), Texas, Dolly Parton somewhere warbles “(There Will Be) Peace in the Valley” to dispel masculine hypocrisy angst, and co-writers Marsh and Milo Addica previously discussed “Bible stories and fairy tales and myths,” along with The Night of the Hunter and Psycho as American Gothic, but this black take on the prodigal son never picks up steam beyond initial exposition.

The problem may partly lie in the long takes and “complete freedom” given the actors in matters of wardrobe and personal style in the oppressive location-shooting heat, for everyone is going a different way, or no way. Largely, it seems the characters are so shallow that, along with them, the viewer is clueless. Looking younger than he must be after a three-year hitch, Elvis Sandow (Gael García Bernal) gets his honorable discharge and, the U.S.S. Athena silhouetted in a shoulder tattoo, packs up his scant possessions and M-1 Garand rifle, buys a rattletrap 1969 Mercury Cougar, pays a visit to a prostitute (Veronica Bernal) and naïvely looks to be hugged by the father he has never met.

Trouble is, after sowing wild oats long ago with now-dead Tex-Mex Yolanda, Elvis’ father found Christ, a wife, two subsequent children in that marriage, and a calling. In a turn as an unappealing heavy, albeit a supposedly conflicted one, William Hurt plays financially and spiritually successful evangelical Pastor David Sandow and wants nothing to do with Elvis, who follows the family home after Sunday services. Christian music rocker son Paul (Paul Dano) tries to get his school to teach Intelligent Design, anticipates pursuing religious studies at Baylor, and hunts deer with a bow together with the stern father he self-righteously resembles.

Two years younger, repressed daughter Malerie (Pell James) is not as superficially imagined and, even before Sandow’s rebuff, attracts virginal-looking Elvis’ eye and he, hers. The ex-sailor retreats to a cheap apartment and employment as Bruno’s Pizza delivery man but effortlessly charms the ignored lonely girl into what she thinks is love, and then into sex.

The unlucky teenager becomes pregnant, and the half-brother and –sister vow mutual love. At this point, it is relevant to wonder about this bastard son’s motives, and while the concept of revenge surfaces at once, it should be noted that Elvis and Malerie crossed gaga eyebeams before he had any inkling who she might be. Even more fatal, García Bernal is expressionless, so cold that no thought or emotion registers on his face, not now or later when Paul spies the seducer on their lawn and tracks him to an emotionless fatal confrontation.

More intriguing in possibility but not realization, Hurt’s pastor, too, gives no depth with which to empathize or hold on to. A semi-cowboy caricature, he could have been pathetic in grief at Paul’s unexplained disappearance, but his chance encounter with Elvis -- lots of key incidents happen unplanned -- their trip to the archery range, and father’s about-face total embrace of new-found son into the family and lost son’s very room, all have no rhyme or reason. The elder Sandow’s public confession, his acceptance of guilt and Elvis there in front of the congregation, could have been a moving scene of humiliation, but it is brief and all surface. No suffering is projected, therefore no possibility of the redemptive forgiveness that, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s unconfessed, dying minister Dimmesdale can still hope for.

There is no gore in what is a violent movie, not even when Elvis is prodded -- again, purely by external events -- into yet another deadly sin, nor is there what should have been ominous irony in his final “I need to get right with God.” The makings of moral allegory may be here, a most unpleasant one at that. One could come up with reasons why, twenty years later, a young man seeks out his father, why he then does what he does -- is, for example, the immediate prostitute meant as characterization? -- or why the father rejects and afterwards more than openly embraces; but plot and acting are so shallow that I couldn’t figure it out.

(Released by ContentFilm; not rated by MPAA.)