A mentally retarded man named Seymour (John Leguizamo) lives in a world of violence. On the basketball court, he is held at razor point and forced to speak perversions. At a rally where his activist mother Mona (Julie Carmen) protests against police brutality, Seymour watches a man bleed to death from a gun shot wound. And his best friend (Michael Rapaport) shows Seymour how to stick up for himself by using a gun. Seymour's dad, Jack (Cliff Gorman) is the kind of man who brings a flask to the bar. He has a cruel habit of telling Seymour he is "a hustler" who pretends to be retarded so he doesn't have to move out of his mother's house. One morning, Mona is shot and killed in her apartment by Lil' Mafia (Justin Pierce), a neighborhood kid and the son of a prostitute-junkie named Mermaid (Annabella Sciorra). Mona's ditzy, pot-head girlfriend (Rosie Perez, the director's wife) joins up with Jack and a cop (Marisa Tomei) to search for Mona's killer. The poignancy of Mona's death comes in a flashback when Mona tells Seymour he can't go outside because "inside it's safe, outside people get shot."