It's 1973, and Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, accidental cultural critic, washed-up war journalist, husband and philanderer, finds in himself an existential crisis. His wife has taken the kids and left and his best work feels years behind him. In the depths of despair, he receives an unexpected phone call from an old rival offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write about the end of the war, but instead of transporting himself back to his heyday as a pioneering war correspondent as he had hoped, he finds himself grappling with the same problems he thought he'd left back in New York.