Robbins tells her a story of a botched mugging and a fearsome street-fight between himself and an unknown assailant. Wife Marcia Gay Harden is really worried about what may have occurred.
Simultaneously Robbins (who is not all there mentally obviously) comes home one dark and cold night covered in blood and having a rather deep cut in the middle of his gut. Soon the three childhood friends are brought back together when Penn's oldest daughter (Emmy Rossum) is found murdered near their home in a park. Paolo (who ages to become Kevin Bacon) has become a police detective who is much better with his work than he is with a personal life spinning out of control (he continuously gets strange phone calls from his wife who has left him with little explanation). Kelly (who grows to become Sean Penn) became a hood, a trouble-maker who finally got his life straight after being in and out of jail as a young adult. The event is chilling and leaves all three going down different routes of life. Three adolescents (Jason Kelly, Connor Paolo and Cameron Bowen) in the 1975 Boston area fall to tragedy when Bowen (who grows to become Tim Robbins) is abducted by two pedophiles posing as beat cops.
