AllMovie

Loner DAVID PAXTON returns to his hometown, only to become obsessed with childhood friend JOAN and her troubled teenage son ROSS, seeing them as a last chance for a perfect life. David is quickly rejected by Joan, but breaks through Ross's volatile, destructive nature and forms an unlikely friendship with the boy, making himself the object of suspicion and condemnation by the town. Driven over the edge, David begins a dangerous descent, targeting town patriarch BILL HUSTON, the man who stands between him and Ross, and heading toward a final violent confrontation that will explode in the revelation of a dark secret, and the realization that David may be a most unlikely hero.