Matt King is an indifferent husband and father of two girls, who is forced to re-examine his past and embrace his future when his wife suffers a boating accident off of Waikiki. The event leads to a rapprochement with his young daughters while Matt wrestles with a decision to sell the family's land handed down from Hawaiian royalty and missionaries.

A young woman, Theresa, brings her boyfriend, Simon, home to meet her parents and surprise them with the news of their engagement. Another surprise: Simon is white.

A hurricane swells outside, but that is nothing compared to the storm that rages inside the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up, holding hostage the hotel owner Nora Temple, her invalid father-in-law, and ex-GI Frank McCloud. McCloud's the one man capable of standing up against the belligerent Rocco, but postwar world realities may have taken all the fight out of him.