Charles 'Pittsburgh' Markham rides roughshod over his friends, his lovers, and his ideals in his trek toward financial success in the Pittsburgh steel industry, only to find himself deserted and lonely at the top. When his crash comes, he finds that fate has dealt him a second chance.

Tony Buba, a film maker from Braddock, Pennsylvania, tells the story of his hometown's decline (along with the rest of the steel mill towns along the Monongahela River) while he dreams of making higher budget films. The picture documents, in a lighthearted way, the community anxiety and activism that accompanied the failure of the steel industry around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

As her adolescence gives way to the obligations of motherhood, troubled Gemma matures in Motherwell, her Scottish hometown, heavily dependent on the steel industry. Unfortunately for her, her hedonistic way of understanding the world does not fit in with the philosophy of the rest of the villagers, so trouble soon follows.

A slice-of-life story unfolds inside The Florentine, a bar in a Pennsylvania steel town whose brightest days are behind it, leaving behind many of life's disillusioned "losers." Its owner, Whitey (Michael Madsen), is deep in debt to the town's loan shark, Joe McCollough (Burt Young), and desperate for a path forward which won't cost him the bar. His sister, Molly (Virginia Madsen), is days away from her long-awaited nuptials, and then her former fiancé, Teddy (Tom Sizemore), shows up in town for the first time since leaving her at the altar years before. Ne'er-do-well Billy Belasco (Jim Belushi) runs a con on Frankie (Luke Perry) to steal the money for the wedding caterer, while long-time regular Bobby (Chris Penn) becomes a patron-cum-inhabitant as he hides from his fast-crumbling marriage to Vikki (Mary Stuart Masterson). Every plot in this multi-layered story seems to be at its nadir just as a pair of unlikely heroes emerge out of the backdrop to turn everything around.