Herb Rice

Rusty James, an absent-minded street thug, struggles to live up to his legendary older brother's reputation and longs for the days when gang warfare was going on.

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

A gang war/drug story set in a Los Angeles ghetto about the coming of age of a 15-year-old black youth.