Set "somewhere in Australia" in 1922, this is a resonant tale of racism, revenge and retribution.

A tall Aboriginal in baggy trousers and shirt, The Tracker, picks his way through a dusty landscape. Through the shimmer of heat haze three white cops ride close behind in the hunt for another Aboriginal who has allegedly raped and killed a white woman. Names are not given, rather each man represents a type: The Veteran (Grant Page) is a middle-aged draftee who would rather be back at the ranch; The Follower (Damon Gameau), a boyish recruit still in uniform who is new to the bush; and The Fanatic (Gary Sweet), a cruel man who harbours deep-seated racist beliefs, who is in charge.

Little conversation passes between the four, except the occasional exclamation from The Tracker ("'e's 'alf a day ahead, boss!") and the incongruous strains of The Follower's ukelele. But when the posse ventures deeper into the wilderness, events take a turn leading to fiery exchanges, and a shift in the balance of power and loyalties.

For a film that carries so much brutality and pain this is a surprisingly easy watch. The harsh racism of the day, exemplified by the blood-freezing rhetoric of The Fanatic, is offset with edgy humour and a mesmerising performance by David Gulpilil as the enigmatic, eponymous character. Gulpilil's tracker is a man of hidden depths and intelligence. He strides through the bush with a regal poise, the abuse and hatred seeming to glance off the surface of his inner serenity. When things get really rough, he jokes to The Fanatic about getting after "the other savage" and those "black fellahs". It could be a release valve, except the tension only grows.

Director Rolf de Heer tweaks the rules of conventional storytelling in the way he combines soundtrack and pictures. Slomo sequences of characters, set to the haunting vocals of Aboriginal blues singer Archie Roach, linger longer than you expect. The film could be venturing into pop-video mode were the lyrics, a lament at whiteman's iron-fisted rule, not so clearly pertinent to the unfolding drama. The bluesy soundtrack with its steely slide guitar is reminiscent of Ry Cooder's sparse licks in Paris, Texas.

The camera returns to the huge, rugged expanse of the Outback again and again as if De Heer is trying to draw us deeper into the landscape. When asking us to consider our perceptions, De Heer is most effective with his use of cutaways to aboriginal paintings to depict scenes of violence. Instead of blood and guts, artist Peter Coad's vivid images appear on screen depicting the violence that you hear on the soundtrack.

These are the kind of devices that could appear as contrived, but here they work. The end result is something deceptively simple and potent.