Family man Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff) is living the American Dream with his girlfriend Laura (Marisol Nichols) and their son Michael: they have a nice house, he has just raised a loan to make his company grow and they are going to get married. However their dream becomes a nightmare when Wade unintentionally kills a burglar that had broken into their house in the middle of the night on his lawn. Due to the fact that Wade attacked the intruder and killed him outside of the house, he is tried for murder, and accepts a deal proposed by the prosecutor, being sentenced to three years in prison. In the county jail, Wade gets into a brawl the first night after being attacked by an inmate in the community cell. After his sentencing is given, he is transferred to Corcoran State Prison. On the bus ride over, Danny Sampson, leader of the local Aryan Brotherhood, kills a man and hides the knife with a young Aryan member sitting behind Wade. In a moment's panic, the young man hides the knife under Wade and forces him to deny knowledge of the knife. As a result, Wade is sent to solitary confinement until the mess can be sorted out. Upon further investigation by Lieutenant Jackson (Harold Perrineau), Jackson is convinced Wade is an accessory to murder, and decides to send Wade to the Security Housing Unit (SHU), of which Jackson is the commanding officer. Life is tough for Wade in the SHU. In addition to 23-hour lockdown days, and the inability to see his family at first, the 1-hour yard days consist of fights, to which the guards bet on. Scared and desperate, Wade initially groups with the Aryans, even going so far as to shave his head. His cell-mate John Smith (Val Kilmer) who was serving a life sentence after avenging the death of his family befriends Wade and gives helpful advice and hope to him.

A semiserious, often rollicking, multigenerational insider's look at the origins of surfing, the colorful and subversive birth of surf culture, and the mythology and lure of the big wave. This passionate and fluid film is without question the first authentic history of surfing from its humble Hawaiian beginnings to the big business it became to the still-rebellious universe it inhabits today. Riding Giants is a study in individuality and freedom, the pursuit and techniques of pure kinetic pleasure, and the risk taking and attitudes that characterize its leading figures. For some viewers, this is perhaps more than they ever wanted to know. But Peralta's detailed knowledge of the surfing lifestyle, its icons and locations, its boom and exploitation by the media, and the fascination it has held for young men for more than five decades is unparalleled and fuels this expedition for the expert and initiate alike. Closely chronicling the sometimes-life-and-death drama that big-wave riding entails, Riding Giants is an often-mesmerizing visual thrill ride. But the most appealing aspect of this often revelatory documentary is the realization that the man versus nature dialectic never ends; the search for the ultimate wave and the spiritual pinnacle can only be pursued but never reached.