In 1966—British pop music's finest era—the BBC played just two hours of rock and roll every week. But pirate radio played rock and pop from the high seas 24 hours a day. And 25 million people—more than half the population of Britain—listened to the pirates every single day. Recently expelled from school, Carl (Tom Sturridge) has been sent by his mother to find some direction in life by visiting his godfather, Quentin (Bill Nighy). However, Quentin is the boss of Radio Rock, a pirate radio station in the middle of the North Sea, populated by an eclectic crew of rock-and-roll deejays. The pirate station comes to the attention of government minister Dormandy (Kenneth Branagh), who is out for the blood of these lawbreakers. In an era when the stuffy corridors of power stifle anything approaching youthful exuberance, Dormandy seizes the chance to score a political goal, and The Marine Broadcasting Offences Act is passed in an effort to outlaw the pirates and to remove their ghastly influence from the land once and for all. What results is a literal storm on the high seas. With Radio Rock in peril, its devoted fans rally together and stage an epic Dunkirk-style hundred-boat rescue to save their deejay heroes. Some things may come to an end, but rock and roll never dies.
