An off-screen narrator, Mort Golden, takes us back to winter around 1975, the year he was 21. He and his two buddies, Tim and Danny, have a fateful trip over the bridge from Detroit into Canada. The three of them are going nowhere in life, although Mort has thoughts of being a writer, while his mom wants him to go to college. He and his pals contemplate making a quick fortune transporting drugs over the border in their beat-up Buick, "the war wagon." Mort's also hopelessly in love with a girl he dated briefly a couple years before. With border inspectors, Tim's temper, and Danny's bottled up emotions, is there any way this can end well?—