Out on the bleached-bone Montana grasslands sits a large, glowering house: in the middle of a vast, sunlit landscape, a haven for shadows and draughts. The place belongs to the brothers Burbank, a pair of cattle ranchers with little but a surname in common. George (Jesse Plemons) is a plump, obliging, smartly dressed sort, while Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) is older, wirier and nastier: he lives for the toughness of the work, and refuses to wash on principle, wearing the stink of his labour as a badge of pride. When Phil rides into town at the head of a thundering herd, he does so with a thin smile, perhaps because those in his path have just two options: shift, or be trampled.

This already strained domestic setup is what faces us at the opening of Jane Campion’s magnificent new western, adapted from a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage. It is the New Zealand-born director of The Piano’s first feature since her 2009 John Keats biopic Bright Star – though in the intervening decade she co-wrote and directed the BBC drama series Top of the Lake. Its title was pulled by Savage from the 22nd Psalm, and Phil is the hound in question: an animal who circles his prey in loping, inscrutable strides.

It isn’t long before his latest quarry lollops into sight. During a cattle drive, the Burbanks spend the night at a boarding house run by Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) and her fey teenage son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil openly mocks the boy’s lack of manliness, but George is quietly besotted with his widowed mother – and soon enough, a marriage has taken place, and both Rose and Peter have moved onto the Burbank estate.

Phil is incensed, and begins to quietly wage war against this socially anxious woman and her spindly offspring – though we come to realise his territorial prowlings disguise his own deep-seated fear that he himself will be eventually sniffed out.

For one thing, Phil’s background isn’t as rough and ready as he likes to pretend. For another, he recognises himself in Peter – and his hostility towards the lad turns into a passive-aggressive mentorship. Phil seems to be trying to recreate his own formative relationship with an older cowboy, Bronco Henry, whom he still plainly idolises, and whose saddle hangs in the Burbanks’ stable over a small memorial plaque.