After serving time in the Navy, 21-year-old Elvis (Gael Garcia Bernal) decides to look up the father (William Hurt) who abandoned him as a child, only to find him working as a small-town pastor with a new wife (Laura Harring) and two teenage children (Pell James and Paul Dano). While his father is unwilling to disrupt his life to reconcile with his son, Elvis refuses to be ignored, taking drastic measures to insert himself into the family.