Best Kept Secret

In the Irish working class neighborhood of the Bronx, sixteen-year-old KEVIN SCANLON has the weight of the world on his shoulders. His Trinidadian girlfriend, TRACY is pregnant and his abusive stepfather, MICHAEL, has just returned from a stint in prison.

Kevin’s dysfunctional home life is made worse when his mother allows Michael back into their lives for financial stability. Michael uses his dominating presence to act as ‘man of the house’. Violent confrontations and a near sexual assault administered by Michael's ex-con friends force Kevin onto the streets where he seeks shelter in a sleazy, run-down motel.

Kevin’s best friend, ANTONIO offers him the chance to escape his money problems by taking part in the robbery of a high stakes poker game given by elderly, retired gangsters. Kevin rejects the risky idea. He opts instead to continue working as a supermarket stock-boy by day and a car thief for a chop-shop ring at night.

Gifted, fifteen-year-old Tracy hides her pregnancy with the help of baggy clothes and her mother’s back-to-back work shifts. The illusion is disastrously shattered when she is measured for a new dress to celebrate her grade-skipping academic achievements. Terrified of a forced return to Trinidad and her baby taken away, she runs off with Kevin. Her family hastily dispatches the police and a pair of angry Rastafarian cousins to find them.

Kevin begins to feel the suffocation of his circumstances. Desperation finally takes over and he grudgingly participates in the robbery. It goes horribly wrong. The seniors fight back with blazing guns. Fortunately, Kevin manages to escape with a sizeable haul. Almost immediately a hit man, funded by the gangsters, is unleashed and Kevin’s fellow teen robbers are hunted one-by-one and sadistically murdered in retaliation.