A teenager's mother marries a seemingly kind man who turns out to be a tyrannical thug. She vows to stick with her choice in the desperate hope that he will improve their lives, despite his tendency to resort to violent and abusive methods to cow both of them into submission. Drama set in the 1950s, based on the memoir by Tobias Wolff and starring Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Barkin.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.