This is David Mamet’s own adaptation of his first play, an autobiographical and somewhat hokey account of the Summer He Became a Man, by working aboard a steel freighter on the Great Lakes while in graduate school. It’s also the first feature directed by one of Mamet’s best actors, Joe Mantegna, and the whole production can be described as a sort of family affair, with Mamet’s kid brother Tony playing the young hero and still another Mamet, Bob, in charge of the music. But the most striking thing here is a performance by Robert Forster, as one of the older men on the boat, that’s so terrific everything else in the picture pales beside it. (It’s a part one can imagine Mantegna playing, so maybe that’s why he’s so adept at directing Forster in it.) Otherwise, I’d call this fairly routine coming-of-age stuff, borderline juvenilia hampered by awkward flashbacks in black and white but enlivened from time to time by a good cast that includes Peter Falk, Charles Durning, an uncredited Andy Garcia (as the night cook whom the young hero replaces at the last moment), J.J. Johnston, Denis Leary, Jack Wallace, and George Wendt. 98 min. (JR)