Carl Fitzgerald (Sam Neill) is a shy, unassertive man, given to following orders from anyone around him who will take the trouble to boss him about, starting with his nagging mother. In this story, he is very much down on his luck and is forced to take a job as dishwasher in a Greek restaurant in Brunswick, his rundown neighborhood in Melborne. There, he swifly is hauled off to bed by an assertive young waitress. While he is with the girl, he accidentally kills his co-worker, a hysterically abusive and drug-dealing Turk, He calls on his old friend Dave for help in disposing of the man's body. The best solution Dave can come up with is to dump the body in another person's grave, but he manages to boss Carl around a lot in the process. And even Dave's wife gives Carl what-for, lambasting him for his overall uselessness. Somehow, despite his passivity, Carl manages to seem like the ultimate victor in all these confrontations.