An unfortunate box office flameout last fall — where it grossed just over $1 million in a somewhat mangled and abortive platform release — Fast Food Nation marks indie-minded auteur Richard Linklater’s last curveball entry, and it’s a shame it didn’t get a better look at theaters, because Linklater is a superbly skilled, thoughtful director who — different genre work notwithstanding — always seems to locate the uncertainties and dark curiosities of his characters. Be it comedy or drama, they never stop trying, questioning, thinking.

A dramatic modification of Eric Schlosser’s eye-opening, investigatory non-fiction novel of the same name, Fast Food Nation takes an impressive aerial view of the quick-eats industry. It isn’t a comedy or satire, yet neither is it a dour drama or reactionary indictment. Trading in the same sort of multi-story, connect-the-dots template most recently indulged by films like Traffic and Syriana, it shows how cows and illegal immigrants are equal exploitable and expendable in a system that values haste and the bottom line above all else.

The film begins with Don (Greg Kinnear), a California marketing executive relatively new to his position with dominant fast food chain Mickey’s, being dispatched to Cody, Colorado to investigate claims that the meat supply for the restaurant’s new hamburgers has been contaminated with animal excrement. Don visits the local establishment, where he meets bright high school student Amber (Ashley Johnson), who cashiers to help her single mother Cindy (Patricia Arquette) pay the bills.

Don also visits UMP, the meat-packing plant on the outskirts of town, but doesn’t get to see its kill floor effluvium. It’s only when Don meets with Rudy (Kris Kristofferson), an old rancher who’s wise to the realities of the company, that he then begins to see some of the bigger picture.

UMP thrives on the sort of cheap, paid-under-the-table labor provided by human cargo runners like Benny (Luis Guzman). Among the newest workers at UMP are sisters Sylvia (Catalina Sandino Moreno) and Coco (Ana Claudia Talancon), and Sylvia’s boyfriend Raul (Wilmer Valderrama, achieving a surprising stillness), who have border-hopped across Mexico and headed to Colorado looking for better jobs. Shift foreman Mike (Bobby Cannavale) runs roughshod over them — Sylvia promptly quits, but eventually comes back — striking up an affair with Coco.

Despite the subject matter under the microscope, Fast Food Nation is frequently amusing — Linklater has a deft touch with small comedy of the everyday — particularly when Amber’s rebellious, free-thinking uncle Pete (frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke) pays her a visit and scratches her a promissory note for $1,000 on a bar napkin if she makes it to 21 years of age without getting pregnant. Amber’s interactions with her sullen coworker Brian (the ubiquitous Paul Dano) also perfectly capture the downtime languor of adolescent employment.

Where the film most succeeds though, is in its steadfast refusal to let its characters become ideologues; differing viewpoints are presented plainly and without the strained veins of righteous raging. The movie is, at its core, about different, everyday people each weighing the cost and effort of doing what’s best and doing what’s most expeditious and personally advantageous. Overall, it may lean a bit more toward the thought-provoking than blithe entertainment, but Fast Food Nation never feels less than real, and it shares its maker’s agitant’s soul. If that sort of commitment to quiet authenticity in an age of big screen flash and grander emotive speechifying means Linklater continues to retain much of his puzzling, relative anonymity, it’s certainly not reflective of his skill.

Available in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen that preserves the aspect ratio of its original theatrical exhibition, Fast Food Nation comes with optional English, Spanish and French subtitles and an English language 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound mix. A fantastic audio commentary track from Linklater and Schlosser reveal both men to be thoughtful, as well as quite happy collaborators. An equally superb, hour-long making-of featurette, directed by Kevin Ford, chronicles the project’s journey to the big screen with detail and clarity. Rounding out the disc’s supplemental extras are a still photo gallery and a collection of promotional animated flash shorts, styled after The Matrix, that are darkly satirical stabs at the same sinister captains of industry under the microscope in the feature film. B (Movie) A- (Disc)