Johnny Doyle escapes a violent past as a Provisional IRA volunteer in Ireland to lie low in London, until his former mentor Flynn breaks out of Brixton Prison, members of a dissident republican group they are hellbent on derailing the Irish peace process with a few well-placed bombs. Unable to escape Brixton, they find themselves trapped together in Johnny's anything-but-safe safe house, sandwiched between a friendly Rastafarian reggae pirate radio station upstairs and a local Yardie, heroin-dealing gangster Julius, downstairs.
As the charismatic Flynn finds some common criminal ground with the Yardies, Johnny fights to realize a peace process of his own but makes the mistake of falling for Julius's girlfriend Rita, sparking an all-out war.
It is a London-based thriller in the vein of The Long Good Friday, in which questions of race, morality, identity and loyalty play out against a soundtrack of reggae, rock, new wave, soul and drum and bass.
Who does Flynn find common ground with?
The Yardies