有舞王之称的DJ·威廉斯(哥伦布·绍特 Columbus Short 饰)就刚刚经历了一场因为飙舞而引起的社团争斗,他一直呵护的弟弟在这场流血事件中意外丧生。身心俱疲的他来自洛杉矶,到来亚特兰大一所黑人学校进修。
在新环境里感到非常不适应的他,自从加入了一个街舞爱好者同盟会之后,生活开始有了翻天覆地的变化。他的出众舞技在这里得到施展,同盟的人在景仰之余,都期待他能帮助同盟会夺取大家垂涎已久的全国街舞大赛冠军。然而他们不知道的事,纵然有出神入化的舞技,在成为同盟会最有竞争力的主心骨之前,DJ必须面对的是如何抛开残酷的往事带给他的种种阴影。DJ是否能够重新站起身来,正视前方的道路,在这条自己曾经深深热爱的街舞道路上勇往直前呢?
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”