Joshua Shapira, an American of Russian Jewish descent, has become a hitman for the Russian mafia. One particular job takes him back to his hometown, the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, where he meets his disintegrating family once more—an encounter that leads to tragic consequences.

The concept of home is never straightforward in the films of James Gray, and none more so than in his operatically pitched debut. Starring Tim Roth and Vanessa Redgrave, Little Odessa circles the domestic agonies of two New York brothers for a bruising, Dostoyevskian examination of tainted morality.