It's a simple agreement, really. Sort of a trade. Turn in your older brother to the police, and you and your younger brother go free. Don't, and the younger brother hangs.

		'The Proposition' Rating: R for strong grisly violence, and for language. Starring: Guy Pearce, Danny Huston. Director: John Hillcoat. "The Proposition" Web site Opens today at Manor only.

But like everything else in "The Proposition," there's more to it than that.

It's a Western set in a barren land about as far west as you can get, in the remote Australian Outback of the 1870s. Aborigines are in full revolt against the genocide imposed by the expanding European community. The family in question are Irish-bred outlaws living in a cave and preying on the fringes of the prairie towns. While theft and the occasional killing during the commission of a crime seems acceptable to middle brother Charlie Burns, his older sibling, Arthur, has recently led the group on an unusually irrational spree of terror that included the savage rape, pillaging and torture-murder of a well-to-do family.

Even Charlie suspects that intelligent and philosophical Arthur is going mad. When Charlie and his mentally challenged 14-year-old brother are captured by the provincial authorities, Charlie is surprised that the de facto chief understands who's chiefly responsible, shares his suspicions about Arthur and offers the blunt but lucid "proposition."

Aussie rocker Nick Cave has written movie songs and a score of film scores for projects ranging from "Dumb and Dumber" to "Hellboy" to all three "Screams." He's appeared as a singer in several films and as himself in movie cameos and rock 'n' roll documentaries. "The Proposition," however, is his first screenplay. It shows. Several key plot points are telegraphed from a mile away, and the philosophical Arthur is, perhaps, too philosophical at times to be credible.

Cave's screen-writing immaturity, however, is most evident in his inability to subtly manipulate his audience. Instead of guiding our imaginations to paint in details regarding the brutality of the times, Cave and Australian director John Hillcoat focus on every stump of a blown-off toe, every protruding vertebrae where a head used to be, every ragged flap of flesh on the back of an innocent retarded boy flogged to unconsciousness. "The Proposition" is unusually violent. In an age where "The Passion of the Christ" is a Hollywood hit, I'll leave it to you to define the term "gratuitous."

While Australian Guy Pearce gives early-Eastwood stoicism to the brooding middle brother, Danny Huston's philosophical villain is more like Brando in "Apocalypse Now" -- intelligent, sensitive, literate and psychotically brutal.

Ray Winstone's provincial police captain is another dichotomy: caring, gracious and nurturing to his genteel wife, yet capable of as much brute force as the criminals he's determined to catch. Winstone brings great balance to the role.

Cave overwrites a bounty hunter's supporting part, but John Hurt makes it work, and Emily Watson and Australian David Wenham are competent in two-dimensional supporting roles.

Cave's film score ranges from acoustical period music to discordant electric wails. Scores tend to work best when they reinforce artistic moments without drawing undue attention to themselves. Cave's musical embellishment is occasionally overwrought.

"The Proposition" isn't a bad movie, if you're not too squeamish about brief glimpses of excessive human suffering. But it's not a great movie, either. Consider it another strong voice from the South Pacific and a surprisingly competent first film script from a surprising new source.