Two brothers carry out a deadly terrorist bombing, but only one pays the price - imprisonment for life. Years later, the jailed brother is offered a second chance at freedom, providing he helps capture his fugitive sibling.

Jimmy Rabbitte, just a tick out of school, gets a brilliant idea: to put a soul band together in Barrytown, his slum home in north Dublin. First he needs musicians and singers: things slowly start to click when he finds three fine-voiced females virtually in his back yard, a lead singer (Deco) at a wedding, and, responding to his ad, an aging trumpet player, Joey "The Lips" Fagan.