In this biopic, Denzel Washington portrays Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who triumphed over a brutal childhood to become a contender for the middleweight boxing championship, through pure determination. The story follows Carter’s harrowing experience as he’s wrongfully sentenced to three life terms for murders he did not commit, then uses the same discipline, integrity, and ineradicable sense of dignity that served him as a fighter to survive in prison. In a side-story, a boy named Lasra Martin, living in Canada with people who took him in to provide him with an opportunity to get a better education, buys his first book for twenty-five cents. It is Carter's book written in prison, The Sixteenth Round. Lasra writes his first letter. Carter answers. They develop a close relationship, and Lasra introduces Carter to his Canadian friends, who become so committed to him that they move to New Jersey, vowing not to leave until he goes with them. They uncover new evidence, the lawyers develop a new theory, and finally, 20 years later, Carter is freed.