A deeply-felt variation of the classic struggle of the working man versus the forces of government. Iowa farmers, Jewell and Gil Ivy (Jessica Lange and Sam Shephard) work a poor farm held by their family for generations. Shephard delivers a performance of immense integrity in his portrayal of a man humiliated because he is unable to provide for his family. The screenplay reflects recent events in the US where struggling farmers took on government loans to expand and wound up faced with foreclosure on their properties.