The story of the inhabitants of the isolated Scottish island of Todday, in the Outer Hebrides, where gloom sets in as their wartime rationing of whisky runs out. When cargo ship the SS Cabinet Minister runs aground the shrewd islanders run rings around the buffoonish English Home Guard commander Captain Waggett and conspire to hide away cases of the precious amber nectar.
A moving, comic tale of three boys about to leave a grim Catholic School in Greenock, Scotland, who find they must each choose a different path in life as they face the future.
The film centres on the experiences of Robert Lawrence MC (played by Colin Firth), an officer of the Scots Guards during the Falklands War of 1982. While fighting at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, Lawrence is shot in the head by an Argentine sniper, and left paralysed on his left side. He then must learn to adjust to his new disability.
A friendly street kid in India, during the last years of the nineteenth century, looks and considers himself Indian, but is in fact a Brit. The Brits discover his true origin, and train him as a spy.