Akira, a young, jazz-obsessed drifter, returns to his squat, a ruined church, and finds Gill, a wounded African-American GI, on the run after the death of a white GI. Despite terrible misunderstandings and culture clash, Akira agrees to help Gill escape towards the sea, dodging military police along the way.
A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and immediately embarks on a rampage of untethered anger, most of it directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up.