Two brothers from southwest Detroit struggle to improve their lives. Unable to afford college and faced with expulsion - and meanwhile supporting his mother - Jason turns to stripping which turns to prostitution, posing a huge dilemma since he has just begun the first true love relationship of his life. Bobby's own drug habit spirals him down into a darker and darker place, exasperated by the re-emerging memory of the horrible childhood secret he shares with Jason.

A Chinese chef accidentally gets involved with a news reporter who filmed a drug bust that went awry and is now being chased by gangs who are trying to get the video tape.

Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard leaves Europe, eventually arriving in the United States. With the help of Einstein, he persuades the government to build an atomic bomb. The project is given to no-nonsense Gen. Leslie Groves who selects physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to head the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where the bomb is built. As World War II draws to a close, Szilard has second thoughts about atomic weapons, and policy makers debate how and when to use the bomb.