After being imprisoned in Alcatraz for petty theft, Henri Young (Kevin Bacon) leads a failed escape attempt from the infamous prison. As punishment for the doomed getaway, prison warden Milton Glenn (Gary Oldman) places Young in solitary confinement for three years. When Young is finally released from his torturous ordeal, now a completely broken man, he kills an inmate and is charged with murder in the first degree. Although it initially appears to be an open-and-shut case, after Young's attorney James Stamphill (Christian Slater) learns the facts of Young's time in solitary confinement, he launches a daring defence that blames Alcatraz's inhumane conditions for driving Young to insanity and therefore causing him to kill. Inspired by the real case of Henri Young, this gripping legal drama shines a light on the brutality of Alcatraz.