The movie Cowboys peels away its layers gradually, and what first appears to be a man and his 10-year-old son on a camping trip is soon revealed to be a parental kidnapping story. Of course, there’s more to it than that. In his mind, Troy (Steve Zahn) has rescued his boy Joe (Sasha Knight) from a mother who can’t give him the support he needs — because Joe, we learn, was born biologically female but knows in his heart that he’s really a boy.

More layers are uncovered in the form of supporting characters and extended flashbacks that fill in what happened before Troy and Joe took off. Mom, Sally (Jillian Bell), has a brother, Jerry (Chris Coy), who’s more than a little responsible for her family’s dysfunction, and Troy’s Native American pal Robert (Gary Farmer) seems to have covert motivations of his own. Then there’s Faith (the wonderful Ann Dowd of Hereditary and many other memorable secondary roles) — she’s the local cop who’s trying to find Joe, despite a series of hurdles thrown in her path.

Troy remains the pivot on which it all turns, and it’s gratifying to see Zahn, usually a scene-stealing also-ran, in a lead role. He is by turns sympathetic and frustrating, but always believably vulnerable. Bell, a top-notch comic actress, has a less showy role as Joe’s mom, who doesn’t understand why her little girl wants to be a little boy.

Although filmed a year and a half ago, the February 12 release date for Cowboys means that it’s going head to head against Palmer, just released on AppleTV+, another film with a gender-nonconforming young child in the care of a gruff country man with a checkered past. The two films take different paths — Palmer sticking to strict chronology and its single Louisiana location, while Cowboys plays with its time frames and isolates its duo on a trip through the forests of northern Montana, heading for Canada. Both movies are worth a viewing, although Cowboys suffers a bit in its final act, making plot choices that come more from the fugitive-narrative playbook than from the heart.

Fortunately, a final coda rescues the film after its stumbles, and everything up until the clunky climax is nicely crafted. Writer-director Anna Kerrigan has penned a largely solid screenplay with an admirable array of complicated characters, and her matter-of-fact direction lets the performances dominate the screen. Among a cast full of talent, Dowd is a particular standout, her law officer role serving as the audience’s surrogate in unraveling the story and in wanting to see a peaceful reunification of the family.

Happily more an entertainment than a sermon, Cowboys dodges many of the thornier questions about how society can support young transgender children. But it makes one thing abundantly clear: That support needs to start with the parents. Amen to that.

Grade: B. Not rated but PG equivalent for mild violence. Available February 12 via video on demand services including Amazon and iTunes.

(Photo: Samuel Goldwyn Films)