Bullet in the Head

Ben, Paul, and Frank gang up in 1967 Hong Kong and regularly brawl with rival gangs. Ben plans to marry Jane while Frank borrows money for their wedding, but violence erupts when the gang leader Ringo steals the spotlight. After a brutal clash, Ben and Frank take revenge by killing Ringo, setting them on a desperate path.

With police pressure rising, the three friends resolve to flee to Vietnam to make a new start as smugglers. They hope a war-torn Vietnam offers money and opportunity beyond Hong Kong's street fights. The plan is risky, but they are already too deep to back down.

The trio partners with a Hong Kong smuggler to source a load of contraband and agrees to deliver it to Leong, a Vietnamese gangster in Saigon. They depart by boat, hoping the journey will be uneventful enough to keep them alive. The journey marks the start of a long, treacherous ordeal in Southeast Asia.

Arriving on the Saigon river, a Vietcong suicide bomber blows up their cargo in an attack aimed at an ARVN officer. The friends are beaten and suspected of the bombing until the real bomber is captured and executed in front of them. The incident drags them deeper into Saigon's underworld and danger.

In Saigon, they meet Luke, a hitman working for Leong, and Sally, Leong's kidnapped nightclub singer forced into prostitution. The attempt to rescue Sally spirals into a violent nightclub shootout. During the chaos, Paul finds and pockets a box of gold from Leong's office.

The altercation spills into more bloodshed as Sally is shot in the back and killed while the group tries to flee. The morning after, they wait by the river for a rescue boat, with tensions rising over the treasure and their dwindling friendship. The loss deepens the crew's vulnerability in a war-torn land.

As they board a river boat for extraction, gangsters and ARVN forces close in and the vessel is attacked. Paul abandons caution and dives back for the gold, only to be saved by Ben and Frank from a near-drowning, keeping the stash intact. The gold's survival fuels the betrayals to come.

The trio is captured by Vietcong forces and hauled to a concentration camp, where the gold is seized and intelligence documents surface in Leong's box. Interrogators force Frank and the others to reveal their loyalties; Paul pretends to work for the CIA to save the group, while Ben quietly resists and plots escape.

A squad of Americans led by Luke arrives and helps the fugitives escape. Paul escapes with the gold, while Frank, though wounded, is left to stumble through the chaos. Paul shoots Frank to silence him in the middle of the escape, ending his suffering as Luke takes the survivors away.

Back in Saigon, Luke informs Ben that Frank survived but is now a heroin-addicted contract killer. Ben is driven by revenge and pity as he travels toward a reckoning with the man he once called a friend. The revelation compounds the moral weight of their voyage through war's chaos.

Ben makes it back to Hong Kong to reunite with Jane, who has given birth to a child. Meanwhile, Paul has become a successful businessman, preferring to keep his wealth and power apart from past loyalties. Ben confronts him, waving Frank's skull as proof of the past's consequences.

The old childhood pier becomes the stage for the final showdown. Ben and Paul fight in a car chase that ends in a crash on the pier where they played as kids. Paul is killed and Ben staggers away, the violence finally closing the circle on their long, broken friendship.