Genre fans can pretty much tell when a Western is “off” just from a glance, and “Dead Man’s Hand” doesn’t pass that “This looks like a West that’s lived in” test.

But as this horse opera’s from the director of “The 2nd,” “Chokehold” and “Rottentail,” a “genre” specialist whose “genre” is stumbling formula B-and-C movies, one doesn’t get one’s hopes up. One mustn’t.

It’s got lovely, undeveloped Greater Sante Fe settings, some decent displays of horsemanship and amusing if not dazzling gunplay. Director and co-writer (it’s adapted from a comic book) Brian Skiba landed Cole Hauser, Brian Dorff, Costas Mandylor and Skiba’s pal Coren Nemec for his supporting cast.

The dialogue’s laced with anachronisms, the theme song is electrified country rock. But hell, they got the poker hand right. There’s something unexpected in the results when our hero draws a “Dead Man’s Hand,” which as any Western fan remembers is aces over eights.

Jack Kilmer — the son of you-know-her and you-know-who — brings strong (?) Zach Braff energy as a gambler/gunfighter named Reno, just married to the sagebrush sex worker Vegas (Camille Collard). They’e on their way to buy a saloon in Nevada when they’re waylaid by desperados in Confederate jackets, whom Jean-Jacques Renault dispatches with alacrity.

But dragging the gray-uniformed dead to the next town does Reno no favors. The saloon is filled with unconstructed Confederates and adorned with a stars and bars just above the bar. The “mayor” (Stephen Dorff) is former Col. Clancy T. Bishop, CSA.

The phrase, “What the hell, don’t you know the war is over?” pops up once or twice.

Reno’s a dead man, with or without that poker game where they “play for keeps,” with or without the help of the U.S. Marshal (Hauser) who’s come to town to take in Bishop, or aid by the livery stable owner (Vincent E. McDaniel) or the divine intervention of a wry Native American (Mo Brings Plenty).

The laughable elements include Kilmer, young enough to make this guy a pistol packing punk, but again “Zach Braff energy.” So, no. That’s not in the cards.

There’s a moment where Reno’s supposed to be shooting a rope about to hang somebody, and the take “One Take” Skiba uses plainly shows Kilmer discharging his rarely-reloaded six-shooter prematurely, as he’s raising it to aim it.

Vegas is ready for her nude bath with a nubile nude back-scrubber, a courtesy between “dance hall girl” sex workers in the Old West, I guess.

And Hauser and Dorff do what’s required of them, but a tad sheepishly, I must say.

The unintentional laughs pile up like corpses around almost every damned scene in this thing. Robbers refer to a stagecoach as a “wagon,” and considering the “stagecoach” has its canvas side covers rolled up and we can see one and all inside, only an unreconstructed Confederate would be dumb enough to ask “Got any women in there?” when two of them are in plain sight.

Once again, our director has tried his hand at injecting a little flashpoint politics into his tale. But at this point, one has to say that Skiba’s shown his cards in genre after genre after genre, and he’s still drawing nothing but deuces and one-eyed jacks, a loser’s hand every time.

The 2nd, Pursuit, Left for Dead

Rating: R, graphic violence, nudity, profanity

Credits: Directed by Brian Skiba, scripted by Corin Nemec and Brian Skiba, based on a graphic novel by Kevin Minor and Matthew Minor. A Lionsgate release.

Cast: Jack Kilmer, Stephen Dorff, Camille Collard, Costas Mandylor, Vincent E. McDaniel, Mo Brings Plenty, Corin Nemec and Cole Hauser

Running time: 1:35