Starring David Strathairn and Andrew Walker. Rated PG. Opens Friday, May 16, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Taken literally, Steel Toes refers to the combat boots a neo-Nazi skinhead takes to a South Asian restaurant worker at the beginning of this Canadian message movie. In the larger picture, the film doesn’t soft-shoe its subject, either.

No doubt the material came off less earnest on-stage in its original form, as the two-hander Cherry Docs. Its Canadian playwright, David Gow, now codirects the film version with Mark Adam, and the two have scored a major coup in casting David Strathairn, so subtly memorable in everything from Good Night, and Good Luck to We Are Marshall. In Steel Toes, he remounts the role he once performed on-stage as the liberal Jewish lawyer Danny Dunkleman, a man appointed to defend the neo-Nazi Mike (Andrew Walker).

Set mostly in a grimly atmospheric jail cell in Montreal, the scenes between the two men are compelling. Strathairn brings nuance to a man whose devotion to the ideal that everyone deserves a fair trial is tested by a tattooed skinhead he can barely stand to look at. He shades even his most powerful diatribes with self-doubt. Walker tightens every sinew with physical intensity, wavering maniacally from mild humour toward the “humanist Jew” defending him to outright aggro rage.

But as his neo-Nazi starts to soften up, it becomes clear where the story is headed. Many scenes are TV-movie obvious, from a flashback of a rabbi lecturing a young Danny on loving one’s enemies to a colleague confronting him at a dinner party about defending a racist.

Steel Toes also rushes over other key moments, whether it’s the clichéd slo-mo beating or an all-too-brief hint at marital problems at the workaholic Dunkleman’s home. Given more time outside the cell, it’s clear the two key actors could have redeemed this tale of redemption.