Diggers (R)

synopsis

"Diggers" combines humor and pathos in a bittersweet story about a tight-knit cluster of friends, all of whom are forced to embrace changes as their small town way of life is soon to be altered forever. It's September 1976 on the south shore of Long Island. Ads on TV in the local bar announce "a change coming over America" with the upcoming Ford-Carter presidential election, but local clam diggers are more worried about losing their already-fragile trade to an encroaching corporation. Like his father nad grandfather before him, Hunt is a digger, but one with a restless, imaginative side exemplified by the black-and-white Polaroids he takes. Hunt's lifelong buddies and fellow diggers include Frankie Lozo, a brash father struggling to support five kids and his long suffering but spunky wife, Julie; laidback local ladies' man Jack; and philosophy-spouting pot dealer Cons. A sudden death propels the four best friends to look at their lives, as it does for Hunt's recently-divorced older sister, Gina, who works as a waitress at the local diner. Meanwhile Hunt falls for a hip young woman visiting from Manhattan , Zoe, who wonders why his artistic impulses don't propel him out of a dead-end town.