An earnest and well-meaning but derivative coming-of-age drama set in the sort of hick town where yelling drunkenly at passing cars constitutes a typical evening's entertainment, Trash stars Jeremy Sisto and Eric Michael Cole as best friends living, loving, and drifting apart in the Deep South. An aspiring writer whose monosyllabic vocabulary belies his oft-mentioned, award-winning literary gifts, high-school student Cole yearns to leave his hometown and go to college, much to the chagrin of Sisto, who both envies and denigrates his friend's talent and propensity for book-learning. As Sisto begins to violently self-destruct, Cole is forced to choose between his future and his best friend, leading to an all-important moment of truth that feels as predetermined as the lives of the film's mostly dead-end characters. Proceeding at a pace that falls somewhere between languid and listless, Trash relies, like far too many coming-of-age movies before it, on periodic, seemingly random outbursts of violence to provide a sense of structure it would otherwise lack. First-time writer-director Mark Anthony Galluzzo gives the film a vivid, sun-baked quality, while his script reveals an obvious affection for his characters that never quite translates into making them particularly interesting or multi-dimensional. As Cain to Cole's Abel (heavy-handed religious metaphors abound), Sisto strives for a sort of primal, Brando-esque intensity that he never comes close to attaining, in no small part due to the shakiness of his Southern accent. Galluzzo displays a real knack for creating a compelling, authentic sense of atmosphere, but he's undermined by his own fondness for coming-of-age-movie clichés. Subplots involving Sisto's hapless criminal endeavors and Cole's romance with pretty judge's daughter Jaime Pressly prove little more than irritating distractions, while Cole's sullen protagonist is a bit of a cipher. Galluzzo's assured visual sense bodes well for future work, but he'd be wise to leave the screenwriting to someone with a more vivid imagination.