Siblings Patti and Joe Rasnick perform in a rock band, The Barbusters, based in Cleveland, Ohio.

As a single mother, Patti is estranged from her religious parents and struggles to provide for her son, Benji, while Joe works at a manufacturing plant to help support his sister and nephew.

At work the next day, Joe is confronted by his coworker Smittie, whose brother-in-law was the target of the burglary, demanding payment.

Patti arrives and is heavily criticized by Jeanette for neglecting her son while on tour and pointing out her many failures.

With a sense of desperation, she details her desire to tighten up the band and take it to a new level, which he is skeptical can happen.

Returning from a Fabulous Thunderbirds concert, Joe finds Patti excited to audition for The Hunzz, a local metal band.

He has no interest in joining The Hunzz, and she sees Joe's concern for the stability of their family as opposition to Patti's life.

The Barbusters go their separate ways, with Joe returning to his manufacturing job and caring for Benji as a surrogate father.

Later that night, The Barbusters are expected to play a reunion show, but Bu suspects Patti will not make it to that, either.

A young Trent Reznor appears with Exotic Birds bandmate Frank Vale and former Generators singer/bassist Mark Addison as fictional band the Problems.

Ron Dean has a cameo as one of the attendees of Patti's funeral home, and Alan Poul appears as a cashier.

Schrader has expressed dissatisfaction with Light of Day, particularly its plain visual style: "I had progressed from being a person with a literary vision to a person with a visual vision, and in that film I tried to...suppress my new literacy," and the casting of Joan Jett: "it's a good performance, but...that piece of casting just did not work.

[7] In a review for the Chicago Sun-Times, critic Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and called it the "most direct and painful statement" of a theme explored in Schrader's previous films—"wildly different characters with one thing in common: Their pasts keep them imprisoned, and shut them off from happiness in the present.

"[8] Janet Maslin of The New York Times stated "Bruce Springsteen wrote the rousing title song and reportedly took the phrase "Born in the U.S.A." from an earlier draft of Mr. Schrader's screenplay.

As a single, "Light of Day" reached number 33 on the Billboard Hot 100 and received additional album-oriented rock airplay due to the connection of Joan Jett and Bruce Springsteen.