Plot summary

For his 17th birthday, Skylar gets to go hunting deer with his brother Nate. What they are shooting at is not shown, and they don't seem to be entirely sure what it is.Dick Cavanaugh, mayor of the small town of Guerneville, California, is dead.The boys do the right thing. As it turns out, their father Bloom is the police chief, so maybe Skylar won't get in too much trouble. It was, after all, an accident.Lloyd is one of the town's cops and, although he is a Barney Fife type when it comes to enforcing the law, he seems to be on the boys' side.The problem is that the Cavanaugh family seems to run the town. Every business seems to have the Cavanaugh name on it. Accident or not, Skylar will be tried as an adult. For one thing, there is motive. Deputies come to take him to Santa Rosa.But they won't make it, if Nate has anything to say about it. This puts the boys in deeper trouble.Survivalist Uncle Mike gets involved. He is still upset that Sarah is dead. Who is Sarah? This is revealed later but for now things are even worse for the boys.Nate and Skylar are on the run, but for now things aren't too bad. Tony and Joel are morons among those hunting for them (yes, hunting in that sense of the word; these are people who love their guns and believe justice involves bullets rather than a jury).But not everyone is so incompetent. Randy is in charge of the search and he is a no-nonsense, capable cop, who comes across like a drill sergeant. Fortunately for the boys, Eric and Ronnie are even bigger morons than Tony and Joel. Finally, Guthrie is the biggest idiot of the bunch, and with the boys' father searching for them and hoping to help them out of their predicament, this turns out to be a positive development.A couple of other cast members deserve mention. Jamie is the girl Nate likes, and she may be able to help. And Roberta is nearly topless and very frightened.So will the boys succeed in their efforts? Nate wants to go to Canada because he believes they will never see freedom if they stay around here. That's if they survive.Moral dilemmas are a big part of this movie. The fact is that the boys only have a chance at a positive outcome during the first few minutes. After that, the only question is how many laws one is willing to break to rescue them. Morally right at this point becomes a relative concept.