Starring Rory Culkin, Trevor Morgan, and Scott Mechlowicz. Rated 14A.

Everyone with a child, or at least a television, knows that bullying is one of the most serious issues in our Kulturkampf era. In tackling this hot-button subject, Mean Creek has several virtues, chiefly that it in no way resembles the way children are portrayed in TV movies.

A no-nonsense, sharply written debut from Jacob Aaron Estes, the film is set in rural Oregon, in a patch of territory that would appear bucolic were it not for the tectonic tensions seemingly driving its young people to outbursts of senseless whateverness.

The most immediate threat we see is the violence meted out to Sam (Rory Culkin, the youngest and most talented of the Culkin crowd), an almost eerily even-tempered boy being regularly thumped by George (Josh Peck), a tall, overweight, and unpredictably angry kid with a rep as the school's major bully.

Sam's older brother, Rocky (Trevor Morgan, who resembles a younger, gentler Sean Penn), is sick of seeing his sibling abused and hatches a plan to humiliate George. Once he enlists his much tougher pal, Marty (cast standout Scott Mechlowicz), however, events start to get away from him.

The plot involves luring the corpulent creep out on a trip down a nearby river then leaving him in the middle of nowhere. But there are additional tensions with their other pal, Clyde (Ryan Kelley), who himself feels bullied by Marty about his "two dads"--especially when the trailer park--bred Marty has no dad of his own, and for notorious reasons. Sam's friend, Millie (Carly Schroeder), along for what she thinks is a first date with the doe-eyed boy, isn't down with the scheme at all.

There's another snafu in that George, with his motor mouth and ever-present video camera, proves to be a lot more likable than expected, if still off-puttingly goofy. He certainly is eager to please on what he wrongly thinks is Sam's birthday and a chance to start over with a gang he has mostly ganged up on, all by himself.

The film is at its best in depicting the natural ebb and flow of teenagers and they way they really relate--and obscure many of their feelings and inclinations. Estes is masterful when all the elements are in place, motives are revealed, and the kids are forced to confront each other and their own limits. He's a little less successful when things take a melodramatic turn and the struggle becomes more conventional. Even here, however, he's careful to keep his moral inquiry open, to avoid judgment even as these adolescents are suddenly thrust into adult dilemmas, with no way back and the only path forward as green and shaded as a dark bend in the river.