Since he first broke onto the scene with fiery intensity in Curtis Hanson’s gritty 1997 masterpiece, “L.A. Confidential,” the Australian actor Guy Pearce has primarily returned to the screen in roles that pit his characters against the larger, unseen forces of nature.

In the process, he has become one of his generation’s more entrancing talents.

As a sheer screen image, Mr. Pearce has a natural charisma, a tight jaw, high cheekbones, a knowing stare that swings wildly from inviting to penetrating, and a relaxed manner that seems to span his hair to his posture and everything in between. Through the years, he has juggled a mix of independent and mainstream projects. His biggest studio project, “The Time Machine,” was a bomb, but his headstrong drag queen in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” and his vengeful, brain-damaged, note-scribbling hero in “Memento” effortlessly awed mass audiences. For film buffs, it was his less-seen turn in last year’s “The Proposition,” in which he unleashed his rage as a man forced by the law to kill his brother, that finally set him apart.

In all of these memorable roles, his characters have come up against forces outside their control — the corrupt police department, a damaged brain, the immoral, indecent tyranny of the Australian outback circa 1900. “First Snow,” a harrowing tale of paranoia and self-doubt, uses many of the same themes, and draws from Mr. Pearce an equally compelling portrait of a man out of control.

Yet there’s more range here. Mr. Pearce’ Jimmy starts the film as the classic icon of the American dream: a confident salesman out on the open road, hocking jukeboxes from town to town as he turns his own profit. More than that, he looks good in his suit, has a beautiful woman waiting for him back home, and can sweet talk anyone.

But when his car dies on a rural stretch of desert road one day, the system breaks down. Told he’ll have to wait a few hours for repairs, Jimmy decides to sample the local color and forks over $10 to a local psychic (J.K. Simmons) who practices his talent out of a mobile trailer only a few feet from the body shop. A few minutes into the reading, after the psychic has made a quaint prediction about the local basketball team and a big sale Jimmy will close in the coming days, his eyes grow wide and he recoils in horror. Jimmy laughs, thinking it’s just part of the act, but the old man tells him to leave — that he’s lost the vision.

What unfolds from there is an incremental, increasingly out-ofcontrol descent into fear, as Jimmy becomes convinced that the fortune-teller has seen something awful in his future. When the basketball prediction comes true and Jimmy lands that big account, he starts returning to that rural pit stop — first with more questions and then with a loaded gun. All the psychic can tell him is that he has nothing to fear until the year’s first snowfall.

As Jimmy walks away, more afraid than ever, “First Snow” lurches forward as a claustrophobic character study of a man unhinged. As the days tick by and winter grows closer, he starts wracking his brain for ways he could die, or who could possibly want to kill him. He thinks of the poor-selling salesman who was just fired from the company, then goes back to a childhood friend who went to jail when Jimmy talked to the police.

Before long, he’s staring out from his blinds in the middle of the night, ditching his girlfriend as he fortifies his home and, as the first flakes of snow fall to the ground, going so far as to lock himself in a faraway hotel, holed up against whatever fate might have in store for him.

What the story, by the writer-director Mark Fergus, ultimately lacks is a smooth transition from Jimmy’s early paranoia to the surprises awaiting him at the end of his journey. Yet through it all, Mr. Pearce makes the most of this opportunity to swing between extremes, veering from cocky to claustrophobic, cowering, and, ultimately, calm.

In fact, as the movie builds to a climactic scene in which Jimmy will finally encounter the psychic’s final vision, it becomes clear that his outcome has subtly become a moot point. The real climax is not about whether Jimmy lives or dies, but if he can overcome his own mind and find some semblance of mental stability.

As he wipes away the sweat, puts down the bottle, opens his hotel room door and steps out into the snow, ready to accept what’s coming, the movie reaches a tranquil, philosophical crescendo. Really, “First Snow” is not about this man’s fears at all, but rather about his passage into fearlessness. For Mr. Pearce, it’s another man vs. nature bout that’s gone to the lightweight.