Steel City doesn't need to show us the faraway Gateway Arch to evoke the thwarted dreams on the other side of the river. First-time director Brian Jun was raised in Alton, and he understands the hardscrabble heartland down to his bones. We never see anyone profiting or escaping from this unnamed industrial city, just common laborers struggling to make peace with their limits.
Peace is elusive for P.J. (Thomas Guiry), a decent kid of about 20 who is haunted by the traffic accident that led to manslaughter charges against his father, Carl (John Heard, whose usual affability has an added poignancy here).
After years of estrangement, P.J. was with his father that night and, now that Carl is in jail, P.
J.'s life is loosed from its moorings. He is fired from his dishwashing job at a Mexican restaurant, he can't pay the utility bills on his tumbledown shack and he brawls with his philandering older brother (Clayne Crawford), who suspects that he and P.
J are bedding the same barmaid (Heather McComb). Offering him a rope to hold on to are America Ferrera (pre- Ugly Betty ) as the simple girl whose love he can't accept and scene-stealer Raymond J. Barry as the battle-scarred uncle who urges P.
J. to sharpen the chip on his shoulder into a tool. But until a final plot twist that raises more questions than it answers, redemption is just a dim star on the horizon.
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