The proof-of-concept for Wild Horses is in the pudding: Robert Duvall in front of and behind the camera, festival “it” boy James Franco and once teenage heart-throb Josh Hartnett saddled at his side. Even though Duvall hasn’t directed a film since 2003’s widely panned Assassin Tango (what. a. terrible. name.) there is promise in the idea of the diverse trio hidden beneath cowboy brims mugging through difficult family dynamics. Duvall, Franco and Hartnet aptly square off but there is just so much wrong with Wild Horses that it’s hard to overlook its bumbling, clueless ways.

In the opening moments of the film, Duvall discovers his youngest son (Franco) in the arms of the Spanish stable boy and threatens them both at gunpoint. There’s mumbling and grumbling to such a degree that I wasn’t sure whether Duvall’s character was supposed to be senile – he’s not – and soon he fires two shots from his handgun – the fire time, the barrel doesn’t even register a visible flare but a shooting noise rattles through the room. Inattention to detail like this abounds in Wild Horses. In a real d-bag, deep-Texas, sternly backwards move, Duvall threatens his son at gunpoint, effectively booting his candy ass from the ranch once and for all.

The film picks up 15 years later when a “lady sheriff” (Luciana Duvall) is assigned a cold case involving the disappearance of the aforementioned stable boy. Turns out that he was wiped from the face of the earth following Duvall’s barnyard discovery. How coincidental. Before long, Ms. Lady Sheriff comes sniffing ’round ol’ man Duvall’s ranch asking nosy questions like, “Do you know what happened to that boy that was buggering your son that you banished?” Rather than sift through a convincingly maze-like web of mystery, Wild Horses keeps the “who killed the stable boy?” card in its back pocket until the final scene of the movie. It’s excruciating getting to the end because by the time we’re only quarter of the way there, we think we know that Duvall did it and don’t really care either way.

Admittedly, there are some fine performances from Duvall and Franco, particularly when the two face each other down and attempt to reconcile their broken relationship, but the script is so poorly written that you are left wondering why Franco even signed on in the first place. I’m nearly convinced he only took the role so he would play a gay character.

In my interview with him, Robert Duvall admitted that the first draft of the script was “fucking terrible”. I don’t know what happened between that iteration and this but it’s hard to imagine something even more messy, poorly written and almost entirely fake feeling than Duvall’s final edit of the material. To make matters worse, Duvall cast his younger, much more Argentinian wife in the lead role of “Lady Sheriff” and she is all but incompetent in the part. She can barely hack her way through her lines but tasked with taking on a Texan accent, she flubs and fumbles her way into a full-blown cinematic safety. She chokes worse than the Seahawks on the one-yard line.

From a directing standpoint, Duvall is almost incapable of framing an interesting shot. It feels more like he planted the camera in an arbitrary position, yelled “Action”, did the scene and rolled the print. There is no indication of forethought, visual complexity or composition. When mounted on a horse looking down on the outcast son, Duvall doesn’t even take advantage of the natural opportunity to frame himself looming large in the corner of our line of sight, lording over his once rejected offspring, meant to look small and unfocused.

No, every shot is the product of a camera somewhere for no reason telling a story that does need to be told, but not by the people assembled here. The tale of a father and son – particularly a conservative, Texan one – trying to sort through what it means to have a gay son/have a father that believes that being gay is “evil” is one rich with dramatic potential. To see it so egregiously executed and sufficiently botched as it is here is borderline painful.