The film intercuts between flashbacks and the present, but this summary follows the true chronology of events. The film features Zhong Ling as Dog slug and Ye Yaxuan as Girl slug, anchoring a story of crime, pursuit, and uneasy loyalties.
Career bank robber Jack Foley finds himself at Lompoc Penitentiary in California after a sister’s tip-off leads to a capture that also draws in his friend Buddy. While behind bars, Foley crosses paths with a few inmates who will shape the heist gone awry: the crafty Glenn and the white-collar strategist Richard Ripley from Detroit. Foley’s bold save of Ripley from an extortion scheme by a brutal enforcer, Maurice "Snoopy" Miller, earns Ripley’s whispered promise of a job on the outside and a brag about diamonds hidden at his home. The seed of a bigger score has been planted, and Foley clings to the idea of a fresh future beyond prison walls.
After his release, Foley shows up at Ripley’s office hoping for a proper opportunity, only to be offered a lowly security guard post. Frustrated, he confronts Ripley, who dismisses Foley’s criminal history as a liability and ejects him. A quick glance across the street reveals a bank heist that Foley attempts—and fails—leading to another reversal of fortune: he ends up back in custody, this time at Glades Correctional Institution in Florida. There, Foley senses a budding breakout orchestrated by fellow inmate Chino and decides to hitch a ride, prompting a tense chain of calls to Adele, his ex-wife and an out-of-work magician’s assistant, to warn Buddy and Glenn.
When the breakout night arrives, U.S. Marshal Karen Sisco bursts onto the scene just as the tunneling meshy plot begins to unravel. Foley escapes in a guard’s uniform, overpowers Sisco, and the pair are momentarily bound by a dangerous tension as they share a ride with Glenn to switch cars. Sisco, who recognizes Foley from a prior transport job, convinces him to flee with her rather than be hunted down again. The escape turns chaotic: Foley panics, crashes the car, and flees while Sisco is hospitalized, and Foley and Buddy head toward Miami to regroup.
Sisco drifts into a dream where she envisions tracking Foley, but the dream crescendos into a moment of intimacy rather than an arrest. Awake, she commits to joining the task force pursuing the fugitives, while she probes Adele for answers and ends up arresting Chino when he seeks revenge. Her investigation deepens, and she secures a place on the effort, even as the lead agent keeps her on the sidelines during a raid on Buddy’s hotel room. Foley and Sisco lock eyes in an elevator, and she lets them slip away without triggering a broader pursuit.
The fugitives head north to Detroit with a plan to break into Richard Ripley’s mansion and steal the hidden diamonds, prompting Miller to assemble his own burglary crew—his brother-in-law Kenneth, White Boy Bob, and a hesitant Glenn, who is reluctantly drawn into the plan. Meanwhile, Foley and Sisco’s bond intensifies, with a chance meeting at a hotel bar leading to a night of personal connection that complicates loyalties and motives on both sides.
As the crew isolates Ripley, Glenn experiences a crisis of conscience and avoids a direct confrontation with Sisco, who remains determined to tail Foley. The group breaches Ripley’s mansion, menacing the housekeeper Midge and forcing a tense struggle to reach the safe. Foley discovers the diamonds hidden in Ripley’s tropical fish tank, a shocking discovery that reframes everything: Ripley confesses his love for Midge, and Miller’s men seize him, determined to claim the loot and the control it represents.
Faced with a brutal choice, Foley chooses to protect Midge, handing the diamonds to Buddy but returning inside to confront Miller’s group. A deadly sequence unfolds: Kenneth is shot in bed by Foley, White Boy Bob accidentally shoots himself, and Sisco arrives to shoot Miller in self-defense. In a final, morally fraught moment, Foley pleads with Sisco to kill him by offering an empty gun; she instead shoots him in the leg and takes him into custody.
As Foley rides away in a police van, he meets Hejira Henry, a prisoner who claims to have escaped nine times. Realizing that Sisco has engineered their safe return to Glades, Foley grins with a mix of resignation and approval as the van heads toward Florida, signaling an ending that is equal parts captured and connected by the very force that drew them together.
