The film starts as Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) walks past an immigration detention center. She meets other revolutionaries of the group, The French 75, by the U.S.-Mexico border. Among the other members include her boyfriend, “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), Deandra (Regina Hall), Mae West (Alana Haim), Laredo (Wood Harris), and Junglepussy (Shayna McHayle). They all organize a plan to break into the detention center.
That night, the French 75 put their plans in motion. Perfidia comes upon the tent of Captain Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) while her comrades go free the detainees. Perfidia forces Lockjaw to walk out of his tent with an erection. As the group completes their goal, they start shooting off fireworks. Lockjaw promises to see Perfidia again after she puts him in a cage. They drive away celebrating their victory, and Pat and Perfidia start to make out.
The French 75 continue to carry out attacks, such as planting a bomb at a politician’s campaign office, as well as destroying an electrical tower and knocking power out to the entire city. All the while, Lockjaw has eyes on the group, but especially Perfidia.
The group is set to rob a bank, but Lockjaw catches Perfidia in the act of planting a bomb. He agrees to let her go on the condition that she engage in a sexual affair with him. She later meets him in a hotel that night and has sex with him, but with her in control. Perfidia is later pregnant, but Pat thinks the baby is his. Perfidia’s mother Jennie (Starletta DuPois) tells Pat she doesn’t think he is capable of stepping up to take care of her daughter and grandchild.
Perfidia gives birth to a daughter, Charlene. She admits in her journal entries that she has gotten jealous of her own baby after seeing the way Pat has devoted his life to Charlene. Eventually, Pat realizes he cannot convince Perfidia to live with him and Charlene as a family, and she abandons them to continue being a revolutionary. Lockjaw later finds Pat and questions him about his daughter, making him realize that they might be in danger.
Perfidia and other French 75 members pull of a bank robbery. Things go awry when Perfidia fatally shoots a security guard that was reaching for his gun. After a car chase through the city, Perfidia is forced to go on foot until Lockjaw and his goons capture her. He tells her she can go free if she gives up the other French 75 members. Realizing he and Charlene are in danger, Pat arranges to take Charlene to a sanctuary city, Baktan Cross, and now live as Bob and Willa Ferguson. Perfidia enters witness protection, while members like Mae, Laredo, and Junglepussy are all gunned down. When Lockjaw goes looking for Perfidia, she has already escaped and made her way to Mexico.
Sixteen years later, Bob has been taking care of Willa (Chase Infiniti) and having her train martial arts under Sensei Sergio (Benicio Del Toro). However, she has not been happy with the way he has become an alcoholic and drug abuser, and how she has to take care of him more than he takes care of her. Meanwhile, Lockjaw has been recruited by a secret white supremacist organization, the Christmas Adventurers, for his anti-immigration efforts. The leader, Virgil Throckmorton (Tony Goldwyn), speaks to Lockjaw and commends him on his work but asks him if he has ever engaged in an interracial affair. Lockjaw lies and says no, but realizes he needs to cover his back.
Lockjaw has Bob’s former associate Howard Sommerville/”Billy Goat” (Paul Grimstad), the one who gave Bob his and Willa’s aliases, arrested by an indigenous bounty hunter, Avanti Q (. Howard is forced to give up Bob and Willa’s names, as well as their location in Baktan Cross. Lockjaw’s goal is to kill Bob and take in Willa to hide evidence of his affair. Two boys who witness Howard getting arrested send out a distress signal, alerting the surviving French 75. Deandra shows up at Willa’s school dance before Lockjaw and his goons can get her. The men arrive at the school and question Willa’s schoolmates, including a few of her friends who refuse to give up her phone number (despite Bob always telling her NOT to have a phone).
Bob gets contacted by an associate alerting him about the situation. However, he has long since fried his brain from drug use and cannot remember the codes. Bob flees his home before Lockjaw’s goons can get to him. Lockjaw tries to smoke Bob out, but he escapes through the tunnels. He goes to a payphone to call someone and get a rendezvous point to locate Willa, but he cannot remember the answer to “What time is it?” and is unable to sway the person on the other end to just give him the info he needs.
Bob goes to Sergio’s dojo to get help. He once again contacts the person for the rendezvous point but gets nowhere. Bob manages to contact a former ally, Talleyrand (Dijon Duenas), who is able to vouch for Bob, and gets the other contact to give Bob the rendezvous point. Sergio, who harbors undocumented immigrants, alerts them and has them run into the streets, along with other students of his. During the escape, Bob falls from a roof and gets tased in an alley. Meanwhile, the arresting officers interrogate Willa’s classmates, who all refuse to give up her phone number except for one. When it starts ringing, Deandra catches it and throws Willa’s phone out the car window.
Deandra brings Willa to the rendezvous point, a hidden convent of revolutionary nuns. They know Perfidia as a “rat” but they come to trust Willa to pull her weight around there. Willa is hurt to learn that her mother betrayed her comrades instead of being the hero that Bob led her to believe she was.
The Christmas Adventurers meet in an underground location and invite member Tim Smith (John Hoogenakker) to join them. They discuss the rumor of Lockjaw’s affair with a black woman and the offspring conceived from the affair. Seeing this as a betrayal of their personal ethics, Virgil orders Smith to kill both Lockjaw and Willa.
Bob is in custody at the hospital but is aided by a nurse in escaping and getting back with Sergio. En route to the rendezvous point, police spot Bob and Sergio with open containers. Sergio speeds up and gives Bob an opportunity to exit the moving vehicle, but Bob gets too nervous to jump and Sergio has to force him out. Sergio gets arrested while Bob gets away on foot. Bob hot-wires another car and makes his way to the convent.
Lockjaw and his goons manage to track down the convent first and raid it. He grabs Willa and forces her to undergo a DNA test, which eventually confirms that Lockjaw is her biological father, something that devastates Willa. He has Avanti take Willa so that he can dispose of her. Avanti brings Willa to a location with other gunmen, but he draws the line at harming minors, so Avanti kills the rest of the gunmen and takes a fatal bullet himself. Willa takes his car and starts to drive away.
Lockjaw is spotted on the road by Smith, who shoots him in the face and causes him to crash his car. Bob drives by the scene and fears the worst, but only finds Lockjaw seemingly dead. Willa sees that Smith is gaining on her, and Bob drives in that direction as well. Willa stops at the top of a hill and goes to hide behind a rock. Smith fails to see the car in time due to his high speed and he crashes against the back. He gets out and approaches Willa. She gives him some revolutionary codes which he fails to respond to, and Willa shoots him dead before he can get her. Bob then goes by the scene and reunites with Willa.
Lockjaw is shown to have survived the attack, but with his face heavily disfigured. He goes back to the Christmas Adventurers, claiming that he was “raped in reverse” by Perfidia. The Christmas Adventurers appear to promote Lockjaw and give him his own office, but they instead gas him to death and throw his body into a furnace.
Bob and Willa return home. He gives her a letter from Perfidia, which is addressed to her as “Charlene”. This allows Willa to reconcile with her mother’s actions. She listens on the radio to news of a protest happening hours away in Oakland. Willa bids Bob farewell as she goes to join the protest, and he is no longer fearful for her future. [wide]
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