Well Madsen doesn't exactly get to ride off into the sunset with the girl but he definitely gets to play the guy that wins all our sympathy. He plays Sean Kelleher, an Irish boxer living in Cork who accidentally kills his friend in the ring. This prompts Kelleher to promise his wife that he'll never box again. When heart disease takes his wife, Kelleher is left alone to raise his young son Michael (Luke Whelton). After a few years, Kelleher discovers that Michael suffers from the same hereditary heart disorder that had ended his wife's life. Now Kelleher is faced with mounting debt and enormous medical costs for the surgery needed to save Michael's life. But with few assets and few career skills, Kelleher is forced to break his promise in order to return to fighting to raise the funds needed for his son. But Kelleher doesn't go back into the professional ring, instead he enters a high stakes bare-knuckle boxing tournament run by "pikeys," a community of Irish travelers living in caravans outside the city. (Brad Pitt brought pikeys memorably to filmgoers' attention in
