Shotgun Stories, the impressively accomplished feature debut of writer/director Jeff Nichols, has a few obvious affinities with the directorial work of its producer, David Gordon Green. Beyond the fact that both filmmakers have a demonstrated interest in the personal tragedies of working class families in the small-town South, much of the commonality lies in the aesthetic sense that Green has been fairly accused of adopting from Terrence Malick. But if Shotgun’s courting of visual pleasure via deliberate pacing and a certain transluscent golden glow fail to reinvent the wheel, at least credit Nichols with picking the seconds that suit the material. A lyrical story of feuding familial factions in Southern Arkansas, Shotgun gets off to a slow, quirk-leavened start, but as a seemingly minor character morphs from grating comic relief to major catalyst for action, the film gains weight and eventually snowballs into an undeniably affecting moral tragedy.

A startlingly urgent Michael Shannon leads a cast of mostly unknowns as Son, older brother to Kid (Low and Behold writer/star and Butterknife guest player Barlow Jacobs) and Boy (Douglas Ligon), both of whom come to live in Son’s house when his frustrated wife takes a temporary leave. Son’s marriage is on the rocks due to his dedication to counting cards, but he’s several full notches more together than Boy, who’s content to live in his van having solitary margarita parties until high school basketball season resumes, and Kid, a wannabe romantic with hidden stores of violence who’s trying to gather the courage to settle down with a patient girlfriend. When the brothers’ father dies, the boys crash the funeral, to the surprise of their father’s three sons from a second marriage. An altercation between the two sets of half-brothers ensues, touching off several rounds of action and progressively violent reaction. It’s a revenge game that neither side can win, but we’re meant to root for Son’s demoralized, charmingly scrappy crew over their slightly less broken-down opponents.

That the thick, Malick-esque atmosphere comes off is essential, because much of Shotgun Stories is spent siting around with Son, Kid and Boy, watching them wait for the other side to make an inevitable move. This all well and good, when Nichols isn’t stalling the natural evolution of his story with clumsy exposition. The points where one brother tells another exactly how he feels become more frustrating when Nichols shows us the grace and economy he’s capable of. A four-line, silence-padded conversation between Son and his mother early in the film tells us everything we need to know about the way these boys relate to their parents. Later, by giving each brother a single line about the town in which they live, Nichols manages to telegraph exactly where each adult-age boy stands on the trajectory of broken dreams. As each makes small inroads to balancing world-weary cynicism with realistic accomplishment, it becomes all the more gut wrenching to watch the escalating brother battle derail their progress.

Shotgun Stories opens at the IFC Center today. It will expand to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the coming weeks.