Summary:

Joel Garcia (Eric Stoltz) is a young writer who loses the use of his legs after a climbing accident and faces medical, existential, romantic, sexual, institutional, and social challenges on the way to resuming what is left of his former life. Joel has to acknowledge his condition, decide (as a liberal and Hispanic) how to stand up against the bigoted bragging of his fellow patient the crude biker Bloss (William Forsythe), and, somehow, how to make the right moves with his girlfriend Anna (Helen Hunt), who is married and whose ambivalence about her relationship with Joel is compounded by his disability.

Joel and Bloss come together, toward the end, in an attempt to ease the suffering of a third patient, Raymond Hill (Wesley Snipes), a self-styled ladies' man who conceals the fact that his wife has just left him. The film was written and co-directed by Neal Jimenez, who, according to Roger Ebert, has experienced much of what his main character goes through.

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