Eddie Backus, 35, hasn't been seen in five years. A star athlete in high school, he flamed out of his brief pro career with a busted knee, and then disappeared. When he reappears suddenly in his hometown, suburban South Chicago, on a cocaine inspired "mission from God", he finds his childhood sweetheart happily married, his best friend with a good job and new family, and his brother, Elvis, sinking into alcoholic middle-age. Determined to reclaim the promise of his lost youth, and rage against the "rags of growing old", Eddie leads them on an ecstatic rampage; from the sports fields of the old high school, to desperate smoky after hours, and finally crash-landing in a ghost town outside Las Vegas, with a dead bird, a pistol, and a hostage.