Ensign Tom Rudd looks at himself in the mirror on a pivotal morning of his career and his life. He is a student in the midst of Navy Pilot training in, around, and over Pensacola, Florida. As his own most severe critic, he considers his recent past and endures a brutally honest self evaluation. Challenge, tragedy and some triumph have shaped the man he observes. Does Tom like who he sees, and can he become the upstanding man he so desperately strives to be? To be or not to be? That is his question and perhaps the question for all of us.