Trama

Gritty drama that follows two high school acquaintances, Hancock, a basketball star, and Danny, a geek turned drifter, after they graduate.

Gritty drama that follows two high school acquaintances, Hancock, a basketball star, and Danny, a geek turned drifter, after they graduate. The first film commissioned by the Sundance Film Festival, it portrays the other half of the American dream, as Hancock and his cheerleader girlfriend Mary wander to a middle-class mediocrity out itself out of reach for Danny and his psychotic wife Bev.—Owen F. Lipsett <lipsetto@tcd.ie>

It's just before Christmas, two years after David Hancock, Mary Daley and Danny Rivers were classmates at Ashville High School in small town Ashville, Utah, David then the basketball star, Mary the cheerleader, and Danny the unassuming geek, his generally quiet state masking a simmering turbulent and unsettled nature underneath as witnessed by he sneaking out of town for good before graduation without telling his family. At the time, Danny was secretly in love with Mary and openly in awe of David, both who he was surprised considered him a friend of sorts, while David and Mary arguably saw their burgeoning relationship as possibly being for the long haul as they thought about their immediate future going to college together, David on a basketball scholarship. While they are still dating in some respects, David and Mary are now at a crossroads in their relationship in their lives diverging, which started when David dropped out of college upon the loss of his scholarship - he unable to continue on academic merit alone - only to return to Ashville ultimately to get a job as an officer in the local police force. While being back in Ashville provides him with some continued adulation from residents who still see him as the basketball star, he can only see his life now as that unfulfilled promise of greatness. Meanwhile, Danny has ended up a drifter, and still unsettled in nature, has just married Bev Sykes, a proverbial wild child, her recklessness also masking some deep insecurities. For the first time since that quiet departure, Danny decides it's time to "go home" for his family and Bev to meet, he talking to his mother once on the telephone in that intervening time as his only connection to home. David, Mary, Danny and Bev's lives will collide on this fateful Christmas back in Ashville, this collision not only them as physical beings but what they now represent in society.—Huggo

This gritty drama opens following two American male high school acquaintances a few years after graduation now suffering from deep anger and anguish over the fact that they are not as successful as they thought they would be. Hancock (Jason Gedrick) is the high school basketball star, that got into college on an athletic scholarship only to lose the scholarship to a better player. Unable to succeed in college based on his academic merit, he returns to his hometown, becomes a police officer and is slowly moving into a middle-class mediocrity with his cheerleader girlfriend, Mary, who is in college and plans to major in the arts. Hancock is still stewing over the fact that he is no longer the sports star and that his girlfriend is not only reluctant to marry him but may end up being more successful than he.

Danny (Kiefer Sutherland)is the academic "nerd" that was supposedly destined to be so successful that he earned the nickname "Senator". It was felt by some that one day he would become a decent and just politician. He has returned home with his psychotic wife, Bev (Meg Ryan).

After a quick Christmas Eve reunion with his parents, Danny learns that his father is dying. He is unable to come to grips with the fact that while he left town with great expectations, he has returned a poor drifter. He shows a sensitive side even though he has married this trampy, bossy and psychotic woman. His desire to run from his problems again,however, prompts Bev to mock his manhood in front of some of his high school friends at a bar and the two decide to hold up a convenience store perhaps as a means for Danny to prove his manhood or because that is just what "Hollywood white trash" would do.

Just then, Hancock, unaware that Danny has returned to town, drives into the store's parking lot arguing with his girlfriend about the future of their relationship. Interrupting the robbery he fatally shoots Danny and wounds Bev. Hancock then suffers something of an emotional breakdown. Danny and Hancock are shown to really have little in common except that Danny once had a crush on Mary and perhaps a repressed crush on Hancock.

As other police officers and paramedics arrive on scene, Hancock drives with his girlfriend to an open field where he had previously shared, with his police partner, some of his frustrations. He screams to Mary how he feels he has been lied to while growing up. While it is unclear who precisely lied to him, the film seems to implicate Reagan. The anger that Hancock shows probably stems from how he now perceives the universal achieveability of the so-called "American dream" to be nothing but an illusion! Later Hancock has to personally inform Danny's father that he has killed his son and thus the film ends with bleak social commentary on the limited economic opportunities for small town Americans in the twentieth century.