The film revolves around Rusty James, a cool teenager who is still trying to live his life differently. Rusty struggles to live up to his beloved brother's reputation in a poor industrial city facing a different path.
Coppola's recent viewing seems to have been German silent films of the '20s, so he has decided to coat the whole enterprise in a startling Expressionist style, which is very arresting but hardly appropriate to the matter in hand.
A bit too over-stylized to allow for any great involvement, the most interesting part of this is spotting the young actors before they became stars -- most notably nephew-of-the-director Nicolas Cage.
The action is clotted and murky, and Coppola obviously hasn't bothered to clarify it for the members of his cast, who wander through the film with expressions of winsome, honest befuddlement.
