Frankie McGuire (Brad Pitt) is a member of the IRA (Irish Republican Army) in Belfast, Ireland. He joined the terrorist group after seeing his father shot by loyalist paramilitaries when he was eight, determined to avenge his father’s death. Since joining the IRA he has been responsible for the deaths of British soldiers and many loyalist paramilitaries. After a particularly violent and public incident involving the British Army, Frankie flees to America where he meets a sympathetic judge who gives him a false identity and finds him somewhere to live, with an American cop Tom O’Meara (Harrison Ford) who knows nothing about Frankie’s real identity. However O’Meara gradually begins to become suspicious of Frankie and is determined to discover the truth.