In the 1980s, a girl named Luli McMullen lives in Palmyra, Nebraska, with her neglectful mother and alcoholic father, who constantly fight. On her 13th birthday, she receives a revolver as a gift. One day, Luli sees a television commercial for Las Vegas and decides to run away there. She hitches a ride from Eddie, an erratic drifter with a limp. They argue and she leaves his truck. She eventually convinces another passerby, Glenda, to give her a ride. They bond after Luli helps Glenda rob a convenience store and spend the night in a trailer behind a bowling alley, where a little boy named Angel, who is seemingly under Glenda's care, lives. Luli encounters Eddie again that night in the parking lot of the bowling alley.
The next day, Glenda takes Luli to the house she shares with her husband, Lloyd. Luli discovers that Eddie works for Lloyd as a bartender, and that Glenda knows Eddie and is upset to see him. While Lloyd initially appears friendly, his true nature shows through when he viciously berates Eddie for a small mistake. Luli makes peace with Eddie, and he takes her to a local bar so Glenda and Lloyd can be alone. Eddie is interrupted by Luli while hustling pool, and when his hustle fails, the man that he was hustling makes a deal with Eddie. The man then follows Luli into the bathroom and tries to rape her. She fights him before Eddie comes in and savagely beats the man to death.
As they leave the bar, Eddie says that Glenda has asked him to take Luli to a motel to meet Glenda because she got in a fight with Lloyd. At the motel, Eddie tells Luli that Glenda actually paid him $1,000 to take her off Glenda's hands. Heartbroken by this news and unnerved by Eddie's strange behavior, Luli goes outside, where she meets a boy named Clement and enjoys a drinking game with him. Eddie interrupts them in a drunken outburst, and the two leave the motel. When Eddie insinuates he has fallen in love with Luli, she tells him she will never love him back and asks him to pull over, leaving the truck despite Eddie begging her to stay. As she walks away, Eddie exits the truck and chases Luli into a cornfield, where he rapes her.
The next day, Luli awakens to find herself tied to a bed in a rented cabin, her hair cut short and dyed black. Eddie arrives and unties her, promising to take care of her. They are interrupted by the proprietor, Beau, who briefly talks with both of them and leaves. The next day, Luli, tied up again, awakens to find Glenda in the room. Glenda reveals that Eddie used to be her lover and Angel is their son; she eventually ran away with Angel, fearing what Eddie was capable of. Glenda also denies giving Eddie any money and insists she has been looking for Luli since she disappeared. Glenda unties Luli, but Eddie soon walks in and accidentally shoots Glenda to death with Luli's revolver. Luli picks up the gun and kills Eddie before collapsing.
Luli awakens in Beau's house, and he assures her that he can make it look like Glenda and Eddie killed each other and Luli was never there. He tells Luli about his sister who lives in Los Angeles and who always wanted a daughter, suggesting that Luli contact her, but she declines the offer. Beau drives Luli to the bus station. She phones home and learns from her mother that she sold their land to a property developer and that Luli's father has left the family. Disillusioned about returning home, Luli hangs up the phone and cries. On the bus to Nebraska, she flips through her sketchbook of drawings and finds a note from Beau containing his sister's home address, in case she changes her mind. Deciding to take up Beau's offer to be adopted by his sister, Luli gets off the bus, races back to the station, and happily boards the next bus to Los Angeles.
Although the novel was a bestseller, Hick received almost universally negative reviews by critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 5% based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 3.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Hick's talented young star is ill served by a film whose story wavers between discomfitingly inappropriate and simply muddled."[13]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 28 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[14]
