El Nene (Leonardo Sbaraglia), a petty thief, and Angel (Eduardo Noriega), a drifter, meet in the toilets of a Buenos Aires subway station, and from that moment they are inseparable.

Their love and loyalty to each other is tested when "the twins" join a plan to hold up an armored truck together with a group of seasoned gangsters: their swaggering cohort Cuervo (Pablo Echarri), a sedative addict who's been carrying on an affair with the luscious Vivi (Dolores Fonzi); a 16-year-old nymphet; the trio's boss Fontana (Ricardo Bartis); and the elderly lawyer Nando (Carlos Roffé), who is past the days of any professional illusions and helps make connections to find a good team for the crime.

Meanwhile, the gang needs to wait for new passports (to be arranged by a dubious character played by Héctor Alterio) for their escape from Uruguay.

Fontana goes off on his own, but Nene brings Angel and Cuervo to hide out in Giselle's apartment before they leave the city at night.

Giselle tells Nene that she has a cousin who lives near the border and she can arrange passage, but not for three men the police are after.

At first, the trio believes they will be able to escape, thinking that the police will not endanger the haul (several million dollars) or the lives of a large number of policemen.

In high spirits, the three of them set to defend the apartment and their freedom, while Nene and Angel rekindle their relationship and spend some short and erotic moments of mutual happiness.

Cuervo dies in an attempt to sally, and Nene and Angel remain waiting for the next wave of police attacks on the apartment.

Seeing that they can save neither their own lives nor the money, they burn the entire haul in a final outburst of joie de vivre.

When the screen fades to black, the audience is left with the sound of the final fusillade of police machine gunfire, implying that Angel has committed suicide by cop.

The film is based on the true story of a hold-up in Buenos Aires in 1965 and the subsequent flight of the criminals to nearby Montevideo.

El Nene, whose real name was Brignone, was actually the educated son of a judge; in an interview he said that he never knew what would happen with the money.