The story sees Courtney as Cal, a by-the-book police officer who makes ends meet as a Marine Corps reservist along with his rowdy and inseparable group of childhood friends. When Cal's younger, reckless half-brother Oyster (Wolff) accidentally kills a guy in a bar fight and tries to flee, Cal forces him to face the music. After an unfair sentence, Oyster fights for survival in a dangerous Pennsylvania prison system while Cal and his friends are deployed to fight the lethal insurgency in Iraq. Overseas, Cal's world is shaken, and after he barely makes it home alive, he resolves to break Oyster out of prison - no matter the cost.

After the end of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu meets with a brutal murderer seeking redemption.