With Friends Like These...

In “Released,” drawn from an Off Broadway play, four New Yorkers recount their criminal pasts and their struggles to stay out of jail.

Richard is a spy. Ever since his wife Angela left him, cause she never liked what he did or became, his heart has not exactly been in it anymore. After failing to complete his mission, he decides to leave. His friend and boss, Tony Cooper, brings him to a plastic surgeon, so that he could change his appearance and disappear. A year later, he learns that the doctor who operated on him and Tony are dead. He suspects that someone's either trying to get back at him through them or is trying to flush him out. He then fears that Angela could be next. So he goes to her but she's gotten on with her life and doesn't want him back.

A chance meeting on a street corner brings filmmakers Joel L. Freedman and Philip F. Messina face to face with Wayne Shirley, an extraordinary African American street hustler, dope pusher, Vietnam Vet, and self-styled entertainer. Wayne, in the personal surroundings of his apartment, with often delightful candor, unwinds, philosophize, smokes pot and tells of his war, street and drug experiences. He is not a junkie and brags of his ability to shoot dope and not get hooked. Wayne's center stage position is shaken with the arrival of Sonny and Angel, two junkies intent on getting high no matter what. They shoot up as Angel, claiming to be a revolutionary, clashes with Wayne, accusing him of being a good-for-nothing who for a buck will turn his back on his people. A fierce confrontation follows that touches many of the most sensitive issues of the day. The filmmakers, too, are challenged and forced out of their passive roles and made to deal directly with their subjects.