Matt Damon’s latest role is an emotionally muted contrast to the math prodigy, wily con man, and buff action hero he portrayed in Good Will Hunting, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and the Jason Bourne series. With his jaw clenched and a stocky, tattooed dad bod, he’s clad in steel-toed boots, flame-proof jeans, plaid shirts, and trucker caps. His Bill Baker, the protagonist of Tom McCarthy’s new film, is a laid-off Oklahoma oil rigger working an odd job as a part of a cleanup crew in a town devastated by a tornado.

With his ailing mother-in-law unable to travel, he flies periodically to the French port city of Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison (Abigail Breslin), an Amanda Knox–like exchange student who is serving the fifth year of a nine-year prison term for the murder of her girlfriend. When the stoic Bill checks into a charmless Best Western with a Subway sandwich in hand, the hotel’s manager welcomes him back, but sightseeing is not on this tightly wound Okie’s mind.

The first meeting in prison is not a joyful father-daughter reunion. Bill’s insistence at praying discomfits Allison, who explodes after he admits he forgot the photographs she had requested from her grandmother. Once again, her unreliable parent has messed up: “Dad, are you drinking? Are you doing cocaine?” Still, Allison asks him to deliver a letter to her French lawyer (Anne Le Nuy) that describes new evidence that might exonerate her. An Arab teenager, Akim (Idir Azougli), has allegedly implicated himself in the crime, but the lawyer rejects this barroom conversation as hearsay.

Rather than disappoint his desperate daughter once again, Bill lies to Allison and embarks on his own search for Akim, despite being an outsider and speaking no French. Viewers expecting a Liam Neeson Taken-esqe slam-bang hunt for the killer will be startled by the unexpected directions the story line takes over the course of McCarthy’s rambling but always compelling film. This questing father is a fish out of very different cultural waters, and it takes the kindness of two strangers, theater actress and single mother Virginie (Call My Agent!’s star Camille Cottin in an appealing performance) and her eight-year-old daughter Maya (the scene-stealing newcomer Lilou Siauvaud), to help him navigate Marseille’s immigrant neighborhoods.

The writer/director and co-screenwriter Marcus Henchey (All Good Things) are similarly guided in their exploration of contemporary France and its own complicated racial issues by the French writing team of Thomas Bidegain (Les Cowboys) and Noé Debré (Dheepan). The result is a bouillabaisse of a film that mixes, not always successfully, the suspenseful procedural investigation of McCarthy’s Spotlight with the touching redemption stories of his earlier films, The Station Agent and The Visitor.

When Bill’s search hits a dead end, the film switches gears. It’s four months later, and Bill is working another job clearing rubble, but he’s not back in Stillwater. He’s still in Marseille, staying close to  Allison, although she has stopped speaking to him after learning he lied about the French lawyer’s refusal to investigate further. Bill has moved in with Virginie and Maya, playing handyman around their apartment building, and picking up Maya from school while learning a few words of French from her. “That’s a shitload of words for ‘chisel,’” he tells Maya.

Initially his relationship with Virginie is strictly platonic, which makes for an interesting dynamic, but it’s easy to sense where this unlikely friendship is headed. Thanks to the two actors’ sensitivity and skill, viewers will forgive this disappointing predictability as Bill explores the possibility of a second chance with a new family. “You’re my favorite American,” Maya tells Bill.

More challenging to overlook are the various plot contrivances. (How did Bill stay and work so easily in France without immigration authorities checking in on him?) A late twist in the third act leads Bill and the film into darker territory, an abrupt change of tone that’s not always easy to believe. And some viewers may find the Knox-inspired plot a bit exploitative. Like Meredith Kercher, the British student whose brutal 2007 killing was overshadowed by the international media’s focus on Knox, the film’s murder victim, an Arab woman named Lena, is more a plot device than a distinguishable presence, in spite of a brief scene at her gravesite.

Still, the strong performances and the beautifully shot Marseille setting adds a freshness and an appeal for vicarious travelers. Masanobu Takayanagi’s (Spotlight) hand-held camera captures the ancient Provençal city’s beauty, grittiness, and vivid street life. He also effectively uses more static photographic techniques and duller colors to reflect Bill’s stunted life in Oklahoma.

Like Bill, viewers won’t be left untouched by this flawed but moving tale of fatherhood and redemption.