Buscemi is Tommy Basilio, a 31-year-old loser who, having lost his job as a mechanic, hangs round the titular venue, a drinking dive populated by the desperate and the dispossessed.
Life delivers a number of small boots to the teeth as we find out that his pregnant former girlfriend is now living with his best friend and former boss, and his attempts to restructure a career driving an ice cream van end up with him in bed with the 17-year-old daughter (Sevigny) of a baseball bat wielding pop.
He drinks some more, thinks some more and does nothing. And that really is about it. While the idea shows promise, Buscemi's script never rises above the mediocre and characters never achieve the status of being overtly interestingly. Likewise, Buscemi's first stab at direction only has moments, with him apparently seeming reluctant to make use of the style of Di Cillo or Tarantino.