After escaping from a mental hospital, drifting ex-boxer Kid Collie (Jason Patric) meets an alcoholic widow, Fay (Rachel Ward), who entices him into performing maintenance work at her estate. When crooked Uncle Bud (Bruce Dern) joins the two, Fay's darker side begins to appear. Bud and Fay concoct a scheme to kidnap the son of a local wealthy family and have Collie carry out the dirty work, to which the troubled ex-boxer agrees, but he soon has second thoughts.