Some will see the new Civil War-era drama “Seraphim Falls” as a tale of vengeance and hatred. That it surely is, but others will see something more profound churning away underneath — nothing short of a metaphor for the human condition and a contemplation of its utter insignificance.

We don’t discover until late in the film — some might debate whether we should ever make the discovery at all — what the movie’s title means. The words “Seraphim Falls” refer to something in the past, to a place where something so important and horrifying occurred that it has fueled a cross-country chase and brought two men to their knees, to the very brink of death.

The predator is Carver (Liam Neeson), a horse-riding, hat-wearing gang leader with a handful of gun-toting thugs riding alongside. We meet him as bullets are being fired and follow him as he chases his prey — through day and night, snow and desert. He is vengeance personified, willing to sacrifice sleep and food, not to mention the lives of his cohorts, in his insatiable quest for blood.

Set in his sights is Gideon (Pierce Brosnan), a resourceful man whose legs never seem to stop moving and whose brain never stops thinking. He’s not just the perfect adversary; in several ways, he’s a superior one. We meet him as he’s floating down the rapids at the peak of winter, a bullet lodged in his body. With only a knife, he starts a fire, extracts the bullet, overcomes hypothermia, and hides his tracks in the snow from his pursuers. Slowly he finds his way to a gun, then to a horse, and then to food and water.

Through it all, Gideon keeps running while Carver keeps riding, first across the snow-covered mountaintops, then across the barren plains, through the outlying railroad towns, and down to the sweltering salt flats. Gideon never looks back, Carver never stops scouring the horizon, and as the world shifts around them, the two former Civil War soldiers remain in lockstep.

If David Von Ancken’s feature debut were solely about the mechanics of their chase, this plot description would spoil many of the film’s surprises. But as is the case with so many great films — and this surely stands as 2007’s first great entry —the beauty of “Seraphim Falls” is not in what the story is about, but rather in how it is about it; it’s less about the screenplay than the style with which those printed words are brought to life.

To that end, the film has a patient, almost understated quality that allows the story to evolve into something far more interesting than a thriller about two men with guns. As the landscape solely shifts around these two men, almost without their noticing, there’s something profound about them — something awesome about their obsessions to kill and survive and something sobering about how misguided it all seems in the end.

The Civil War never ended for these two. A wartime atrocity has left Carver frozen in time, caught in a moment so painful and horrifying that he has committed the rest of his days to rectifying the wrong. Gideon isn’t sure how he was the cause of that wrong, but he’s too focused on surviving to stop and ask. As they run, it’s difficult not to notice how irrelevant the zealous hunt becomes. Across vistas both harsh and beautiful, they do not notice or respect the land as they race through it. Together, they pass through towns without talking to the inhabitants, trade away their water and horses for weapons, scoff at those who believe in God, and try to anticipate the other’s next move.

The farther they run, however, the more arbitrary and absurd the situation grows. It gradually becomes clear that Carver is willing to kill himself before giving up the hunt, and as Mr. Von Ancken pulls back from the action, he reveals these men for the specks on the horizon they are. If there is a constant in human history, it’s the notion that we are at the center of the universe, that no matter how much oil we need, how much pollution we cough up, or how many civilians are caught in the crossfire of our wars, that we are a right, just, and honorable people. Surely Gideon believes he’s an innocent, and Carver believes his pain warrants retribution.

Messrs. Brosnan and Neeson deliver performances so raw and unnerving that, by film’s end, their aura of celebrity has all but disappeared in the eyes of the obsessed, the bodies of the exhausted, and a landscape of lost souls. Mr. Brosnan, in particular, has chosen another part here that uncovers hidden depths of talent and suggests his acting potential is far greater than his output. As Daniel Craig goes on to Bond fame, Mr. Brosnan seems to be moving beyond the part that brought him mass appeal but confined him to stiff tuxedos and furrowed clichés. “Seraphim Falls,” by contrast, offers brute physical acting, the type that comes less from the face than the body.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but what happens after the dish has been eaten — when you finally awaken to realize all that you’ve ignored, sacrificed, and exploited in forcing the meal down another’s throat? There’s a hollowness to a life based on hatred — a hollowness to Carver and Gideon’s game of cat and mouse that they would surely notice if they ever stopped running long enough to think. And with his flair for the fatalistic, Mr. Von Ancken takes that theme one step further, suggesting there’s a hollowness to mankind itself, if all we can hope to accomplish with our fellow man is mutually assured destruction.