Italy, near Cassino. The terrible winter of 1944. Dismal icy rain falls, unabated, for days. Three American soldiers set out on a gruelling ascent of a perilous Italian mountainside in the murky closing days of the Second World War. Haunted by their sergeant's cold-blooded murder of a young girl, and with only an old man of uncertain loyalties as their guide, they trudge on in a state of barely suppressed terror and confusion. With snipers lying in wait for them, the men are confronted by agonizing moral choices...