Plot summary

In Michigan, the car thief Rudy Duncan and his cellmate Nick Cassidy, who killed a man protecting his girlfriend Millie Bobeck, are to be released in a couple of days. Nick is in love with his pen-pall Ashley Mercer that he never personally met and has known her through a magazine, letters, and photos. He expects to spend the next days locked in a motel room making love with Ashley while Rudy expects to return home and drink hot chocolate with his family celebrating Christmas. During a riot in the mess room, Nick is stabbed and murdered by a dangerous inmate trying to protect Rudy. When he is released, Rudy sees Ashley alone trying to find Nick and he poses to be his dead friend. They go to the motel, but Rudy is surprised by Asley's brother Gabriel and his four-men gang. Soon he learns that Gabriel has read Nick's letters to Ashley and knows that he had worked as security guard in the Tomahawk Casino managed by Jack Bangs. Gabriel and his gang are arms traffickers and truck drivers with no experience in heists and they force Rudy to plot the robbery of the casino based on his previous experience in the Tomahawk. What will Rudy do? If he confesses that he is not Nick, he will be expendable and killed by the criminals.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil