Brendan Behan, a sixteen year-old republican, who is sent on a bombing mission from Ireland to Liverpool during the Second World War. His mission is thwarted when he is apprehended, charged and imprisoned in a reform institution for young offenders in East Anglia, England. There Brendan is forced to live face-to-face with those he perceived as "the enemy," a confrontation that reveals a deep inner conflict in the young lad which forces a self-examination that proves revealing but traumatic.