Based on a play of the same name, written by Ray Mooney, the film details the early life of contract killer Christopher Dale Flannery and is set inside Melbourne's HM Prison Pentridge's maximum security H Division.

Dale, who is held on remand, is awaiting a court hearing and yet to be sentenced, highlighting the horrific injustice of the repeated beatings he's subjected to.

By day they attempt to break his spirit and sanity by forcing him to smash blue-stone with a pick, invoking images of Australia's convict heritage, while another inmate is compelled to perform more demeaning behaviour such as licking faeces off toilet doors.

Gradually Dale becomes indifferent to the bashings and horrors of prison life and develops an alternative, subversive way to exist and express his rage.

By refusing to play the dehumanising prison game anymore the guards have lost their threat of psychological and physical suppression over him and he in turn has reaffirmed the power of the simple utterance of which he can never be deprived.