Nineteen-year-old Danny Flynn is imprisoned for his involvement with the I.R.A. in Belfast. He leaves behind his family and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Maggie Hamill. Fourteen years later, Danny is released from prison and returns to his old working class neighborhood to resume his life as a boxer.

A hyperactive boy and his best friend, a slow-witted youth with an affinity for horses, start collecting scrap metal for a shady dealer.