大萧条时期,每个人都要守住一个梦想,以此来度过最黑暗的时光,生活失意的汽车制造商查尔斯•霍华德(杰夫•布里吉斯 Jeff Bridges 饰)也不例外。他买了一匹小个子赛马,名为“海饼干”,并笼络了一批同样有梦想的人,意图进入赛马圈。
第一个发现海饼干天赋的是训练师 汤姆•史密斯(克里斯•库珀 Chris Cooper 饰),他认为这匹马虽然个头矮小,腿脚也不太灵光,天性中却藏着十足的执拗和倔强,这有可能使其成为赛马圈的王者。他们找来前拳击冠军瑞德•波拉德(托比•马奎尔 Tobey Maguire饰)作为海饼干的骑师,三个人一匹马在共同的征程中重新找到了生活的方向。
Canadian surgeon Dr. Norman Bethune (Donald Sutherland) journeys 1,500 miles into China to reach Mao Zedong's eighth route Army in the Wu Tai mountains where he will build hospitals, provide care, and train medics. Flashbacks narrate the earlier events of his life: a bout with tuberculosis at the Trudeau sanatorium; the self-administration of an experimental pneumothorax; the invention of operative instruments; his fascination with Socialism; a journey into medical Russia; and the founding of a mobile plasma-transfusion unit in war-torn Spain. Bethune twice married and twice divorced his wife Frances (Dame Helen Mirren), who chooses abortion over child-rearing in her unstable marriage. By 1939, Bethune had been dismissed from his Montreal Hospital for taking unconventional risks, and from his volunteer position in Spain for his chronic problems of drinking and womanizing. As his friend states: "China was all that was left." Even there, Bethune confidently ignores the advice of Chinese officials until heavy casualties make him realize his mistake and lead him to a spectacular apology.