A sensitive, uncompromising portrait of a resilient young boy trying to navigate the loneliness and confusion of adolescence and the harsh circumstances of his dysfunctional family life in a small blue collar town in upstate New York during the 1970s. Whaley's first directorial effort shows his inexperience at various moments, but it is this exact lack of expertise that lifts the film above standard coming-of-age fare into a realm of honesty that most major motion pictures never attain. The fact that the friends he recruited to help fill integral roles just so happen to be Kilmer, Hawke, and Leguizamo didn't hurt matters either.