Heartless Rage

Ezekiel's world has been turned upside down for as long as he can remember. At home, his mother Cleopatra treats him with open coldness, apparently because he looks like the father she despises, a grudge she herself cannot fully explain. He endures sexual abuse, cruel words and blows, neglect, and the constant strain of poverty.

The pressure grows heavier when Ezekiel, a Black teenager already troubled by his relationship with his father, is forced to watch his younger brother being molested. The little boy is also regularly beaten by their mother for the smallest provocation. Each incident feeds a rage that Ezekiel carries with him.

The streets offer him a way out of that home, and he throws himself into their brutality and indifference. Once his mother is living with a pimp, Ezekiel and his brother are drawn into the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, and Ezekiel adapts to it quickly. A meeting with a girl his own age becomes the most meaningful moment of his young life, though she is not who he believed her to be. From that point on, his life changes course and he begins to reign over the city's underworld.