Eddie Carbone is a dockworker and an honest man, with a strong sense of decency and honor. For Eddie, it's a privilege to host his wife's cousins, who have just arrived from Italy. But when his cousin begins to fall in love with one of them, it becomes clear that it's not just because Eddie claims he's too strange, too feminine, too careless for her, but that something bigger and deeper is wrong, something lurking inside Eddie that he can't face. This problem threatens the happiness of their entire family.