The Herlihys are a working class family from Chicago whose three children take wildly divergent paths: Brian joins the Marines right out of High School and goes to Vietnam, Michael becomes involved in the civil rights movement and after campaigning for Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy becomes involved in radical politics, and Katie gets pregnant, moves to San Francisco and joins a hippie commune. Meanwhile, the Taylors are an African-American family living in the deep South. When Willie Taylor, a minister and civil rights organizer, is shot to death, his son Emmet moves to the city and eventually joins the Black Panthers, serving as a bodyguard for Fred Hampton.
Shane MacQuade is a rising star in Hong Kong's underworld kickboxing rings... until he wins a fight he was supposed to lose. Framed for murder, running from both the Triad mob and the police, Shane escapes to America. There, a chance encounter with a professional hitman in the Nevada desert ends with Shane taking the man's identity and his life. Shane finds that the violent world he left behind in Hong Kong is too strong to escape. A crooked Las Vegas fight promoter and a stripper named Angelique draw him into a web of sex and murder that will test his martial arts skills to their limit and change his life forever.
