Domino Harvey, portrayed by Keira Knightley, is a former model turned bounty hunter who finds herself in a precarious situation after being apprehended by the FBI. The FBI is probing into the audacious theft of $10 million from an armored truck, which occurred just 36 hours earlier. During her interrogation by criminal psychologist Taryn Mills (played by Lucy Liu), Domino decides to share her insights regarding the case, unraveling the convoluted events leading up to her arrest.
Having faced expulsion from college, Domino stumbles upon a newspaper ad advertising a bounty hunter training seminar, which prompts her dramatic career shift. She joins a peculiar team consisting of Ed Moseby, a seasoned bounty hunter played by Mickey Rourke, Choco, a more exotic bounty hunter portrayed by Édgar Ramírez, and their Afghan driver, Alf (Riz Abbasi). Their employer, Claremont Williams III (Delroy Lindo), not only runs a bail bonds business but also manages an armored car service.
Claremont’s mistress, Lateesha Rodriguez (Mo'Nique), is embroiled in a dire situation as her granddaughter, Mica, desperately needs a $300,000 operation due to a blood disease. Lacking the funds, Claremont devises a brazen plan to orchestrate a robbery of $10 million from Drake Bishop (Dabney Coleman), a billionaire who also happens to be a client of his armored car service. The plan’s goal? To return the stolen cash in exchange for a $300,000 finder’s fee to cover Mica’s medical expenses.
As fate would have it, Lateesha is already running a counterfeit driver’s license ring within the DMV. When a teenager named Frances approaches her for fake IDs for himself and his friends, the FBI catches wind of her illegal dealings. They threaten Lateesha with imprisonment unless she provides them with information about Frances, who is under surveillance. Cleverly, she misleads them, implicating Frances and his companions in the robbery—while secretly aligning with Claremont for their own heist.
The robbery unfolds successfully with Lateesha and her accomplices, but Claremont soon discovers that Frances’s father is mafia boss Anthony Cigliutti. When Cigliutti learns of the plan, he instructs Lateesha to abandon it and hide the money. However, Claremont's bounty hunters are sent to track down Frances and his gang, capturing them and demanding they deliver them to Bishop's men, all while trying to recover the stolen money from their getaway driver, Locus Fender, who has retreated to his mother’s trailer.
As events spiral into chaos, a shootout ensures, leading to wounded allies and iconic moments of deception. Unbeknownst to the bounty hunters, Alf has switched out the stolen money for plastic explosives, ultimately triggering a catastrophic series of events at the Stratosphere. In a shocking climax, the top of the hotel explodes, leaving Domino as the sole survivor amidst the carnage.
After revealing the truth to Taryn Mills, Domino is released from FBI custody, who advises her to step away from the dangers of bounty hunting. The film closes with the funds being distributed to aid children in Afghanistan, Mica receiving her life-saving operation, and Domino finding peace as she reconnects with her mother. In a poignant narration, she reflects, > "I saved her ... And when she is older, a woman named Domino will tell her that there is only one conclusion to every story ... We all fall down."
