The story line begins shortly before the Bombing of Rotterdam and concerns the impossible love between a young boxer (Smit) and an engaged girl (Van Erkel) as the Second World War reaches the Netherlands.

[1] The film is set in May 1940 in and around the city of Rotterdam, where a young baker's assistant (and aspiring amateur boxer) Vincent de Graaf meets the wealthy Eva von Heerle, the daughter of German refugees who had fled Nazi Germany.

In contrast, Vincent wants to emigrate to the United States to find a cure for his sick brother.

Several critics attacked the film's plot, which was said to be a bad imitation of the story line of Titanic (1997).

Both concerned an impossible love between a lower-class boy and an upper-class girl already engaged to a wealthy but unloving older man culminating in a dramatic disaster.