The son of a working-class British mining family has dreams of pursuing an art career, but when he strikes up an affair with an older, married woman from the town it enrages his kind but possessive mother.
Reggie and Dot are a young South London couple who get married before they really get to know each other. After the marriage, they quickly begin to drift apart. Dot seems content to pursue her own interests, until Reggie meets Pete, a fellow cyclist, and begins to explore his own identity.
Michael Flaherty (Craig Wasson), an American Vietnam veteran of Irish descent, returns to Belfast to join the cause of his grandfather, Seamus (Sterling Hayden). Soon he finds that he is not as welcomed in his home country as he imagined he would be. Even worse, he's the target of an IRA assassination plot designed to make the British forces look bad in order to elicit financial support from wealthy Americans.
