Actor Clark Duke has spent most of his career playing unassuming second-banana types, so maybe working behind the camera is the best place for him. He’s both onscreen and behind the scenes in his directorial debut, the darkly comic thriller Arkansas, based on the 2009 novel by John Brandon. Duke directed, co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Boonkrong and co-stars as Swin Horn, who is very much the second banana to main character Kyle Ribb (Liam Hemsworth). The movie is partly a buddy comedy about the mismatched pair -- the tall, muscular, taciturn Kyle (with his manly beard) and the short, pudgy, gregarious Swin (with his wispy mustache and man bun) -- who are teamed up by their mysterious criminal boss known only as Frog (Vince Vaughn).

Divided into chapters with cutesy names, the movie alternates between the shaggy-dog story of Kyle and Swin bumbling their way up the ladder of Frog’s organization, and the even shaggier story of Frog’s own rise to power in the 1980s. The Frog sections of the movie are almost entirely superfluous, although Vaughn is good at capturing the character’s mix of good-ol’-boy charm and casual menace. The flashbacks eventually get Frog exactly where it’s clear he’s been since the beginning of the movie, at the head of a fairly minor drug operation in a handful of Southern states.

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Kyle and Swin both start out as glorified errand boys in Frog’s operation, but halfway through their first delivery job together, they’re abruptly taken off the road and set up with cover jobs at an Arkansas state park, alongside Ranger Bright (John Malkovich), yet another intermediary in Frog’s operation. That operation seems to be built entirely on redundant layers of middle management; Bright in turn gets his orders from another mysterious figure known only as Her (Vivica A. Fox), and Frog himself leaves the day-to-day workings of the syndicate to other people.

Kyle and Swin seem mostly satisfied with their low-level positions. Swin starts up a romance with a local nurse named Johnna (Eden Brolin) despite Bright’s admonition against intimate relationships. And despite their very different personalities, Kyle and Swin become friends, which proves valuable when Bright gets killed by a rogue henchman, and they have to keep the situation under wraps while proceeding with the operation as if nothing has gone wrong.

While the plot of Arkansas unfolds along a familiar trajectory, with small strategic errors spinning out of control, it’s not about the main characters becoming too greedy or too ambitious. If anything, Kyle and Swin lack ambition, and their mistake is in trying to keep things exactly the same.

Duke opens the movie with a quote from author Charles Portis’ novel The Dog of the South, and the story about colorful criminals recalls the works of Portis, Elmore Leonard, Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers (who’ve adapted both Portis and McCarthy for the screen). Duke doesn’t hide his influences, but he synthesizes them effectively, adding individual touches like a soundtrack full of classic country songs covered by psychedelic indie rockers the Flaming Lips.

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This is a movie full of characters with names like Frog, Her, Almond and Rock Pile, in which low-level criminals have graduate degrees and everyone is a wry philosopher. It’s tough for that tone not to come off as smug, but Duke mostly pulls it off.

As an actor, Duke is perfectly likable (and doesn’t deviate from his typical onscreen persona), and he surrounds himself with talented character actors. He has sweet chemistry with Brolin as a character who could have ended up as the typical oblivious girlfriend in a crime drama, but eventually takes a more active role in the story, and even gets to have the last word, in a way.

Hemsworth, who still mostly works in the shadow of his more famous brother Chris, gives one of his best performances as the convincingly closed-off Kyle, who narrates multiple chapters but still comes off as aloof and inscrutable. Just because Kyle is emotionally distant doesn’t mean that he’s emotionless, though, and Hemsworth conveys the character’s hidden depths with a look or a vocal inflection. “Just a busy day” is his deadpan assessment of dealing with two dead bodies, which tells you all you need to know about his workmanlike approach to criminal activities.

Malkovich, Fox and Michael K. Williams add flavor to the story as the oddball underworld characters, and Duke captures the regional flavor of the deep South, a place where “organized crime isn’t that organized,” as Kyle puts it. The characters are quirky, but they never feel like caricatures, just the kind of aimless weirdos who exist along the back roads of the rural South.

Some of the dialogue can be overly mannered, and the plot meanders aimlessly over the course of nearly two hours, especially in the lengthy Frog flashback sequences. But fans of Duke’s various influences will find a lot to enjoy here, even if it’s a bit watered down.

Starring Liam Hemsworth, Clark Duke, Vince Vaughn, Eden Brolin, John Malkovich, Vivica A. Fox and Michael K. Williams, Arkansas is available Tuesday on VOD.

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