In 1968, Anthony Curtis, Isaiah Washington, a soon-to-be high school graduate in The Bronx, chooses to enlist in the United States Marine Corps rather than go to college. He deploys to Vietnam, leaving behind his middle-class family, his girlfriend Juanita, Rose Jackson, and small-time crook Kirby, Keith David, who is like a second father. Anthony's close friend, Skip, Chris Tucker, later joins Curtis' Recon squad after dropping out of Hunter College. His other friend, Jose, Freddy Rodríguez, is drafted into the United States Army. Once in Vietnam, Curtis and his squad lose several fellow Marines during brutal combat, and they themselves commit acts they will wrestle with for years—desperate choices born from the fog of war, including executions of enemy prisoners and even beheadings of Viet Cong corpses that become war trophies.
When Anthony returns to the Bronx in 1973, returning to “normal” life proves nearly impossible. Skip has become an Agent Orange victim and heroin addict; Jose, now with a prosthetic hand, has turned into a pyromaniac who works as a postman at the James A. Farley Building; Cleon, the squad’s religious but homicidal staff sergeant, is now a devoted minister in Mount Vernon. Anthony, laid off from his job at a butcher shop and grappling with heavy PTSD nightmares, finds himself unable to support Juanita, who is entangled in an affair with a pimp. After a painful argument, Anthony meets her sister Delilah, N'Bushe Wright, who is part of the Nat Turner Cadre, a militant Black power group. The tensions of war, home, and loyalty pull Anthony toward a dangerous option: a plan to rob an armored car making a stop at the Noble Street Federal Reserve Bank.
The next day, the group plants themselves around the street, armed and painted, ready to ambush the truck. The plan starts to unravel when Cleon is spotted by a New York Police Department officer, and Kirby is shot in the arm while Skip kills the officer. Simultaneously, Anthony and Jose are spotted by the truck’s driver, touching off a fierce exchange with the guards. Jose plants an explosive device on the escaping truck, intending to blow open the door, but the blast destroys the entire vehicle. Delilah saves Anthony’s life by killing one of the guards, yet a second guard shoots Delilah, ending her life. The group scrambles to grab as much cash as they can from the burning wreck, then scatters to dodge the growing police presence. Jose corners a police car in an alley, but when he fires at the officer, a car swerves into him and he is killed as the vehicle crashes.
Not long after the heist, Kirby learns that Cleon has been handing out hundred-dollar bills and has purchased a new Cadillac. Anthony drives to Cleon’s church, only to find him being led away in handcuffs by two detectives. Cleon agrees to name the others as part of a plea bargain. NYPD officers storm Skip’s apartment and arrest him, but he is found dead from a heroin overdose. As Kirby and Anthony prepare to flee to Mexico, police raid the bar; Kirby fights to let Anthony get away, but the officers prevail and Anthony is arrested.
In court, Anthony’s lawyer pleads for a fair sentence, highlighting his Marine service and earning a Silver Star. Anthony himself pleads for leniency, expressing remorse for the lives lost and insisting that his actions were born of desperation and hardship. But the judge, Martin Sheen, a Marine and Battle of Guadalcanal veteran, declares that Anthony has forgotten his values and should not use the Vietnam War as an excuse for his crimes, sentencing him to fifteen years to life. Furious, Anthony hurls a chair at the judge before being escorted away by bailiffs. The final scene lingers on Anthony looking out the window of his prison bus, a stark image of a man shaped by war, memory, and a life irreversibly altered.
