Ishamael (Charlie Cox) sees his dream of a whaling voyage come true when he joins the crew of the Pequod whaling boat leaving port in Nantucket. The commander of the whale boat is the charismatic, some would say despotic, Captain Ahab (William Hurt), an experienced seaman and whale hunter who lost his leg several years earlier in a struggle with the gigantic white sperm whale Moby Dick. Now he is obsessed with taking revenge on the legendary creature. Neither his long-suffering wife (Gillian Anderson) nor his crew suspect the true extent of his obsessive thirst for vengeance. Only Starbuck (Ethan Hawke), the First Mate of the Pequod, a very religious and level-headed man, fears that this journey will not be a regular whale-catching expedition.

As Ahab unswervingly pursues his goal, an apocalyptic struggle between man and animal unfolds on the high seas…