In order to get hold of Bobby Z after all, Don Huertero takes a colleague of Tad Gruzsa as hostage and proposes an exchange.

In his stead, the clueless doppelgänger Tim Kearney (Paul Walker), a former Marine and an inmate, crosses the border.

Tim Kearney, on the other hand, finds love (Elizabeth, played by Olivia Wilde as a kind of it girl).

The films starts by introducing "the legend of Bobby Z", an immensely successful and famous marijuana trafficker, yacht owner and surfer, described ecstatically as an entity of almost mythical proportions by an old man, representing the contemporary folklore of the Gold Coast of Baja California.

Exposition flashbacks and narrative by the relatively hostile FBI agents serve to portray Kearney as a somewhat reckless and uncontrollable, yet also likeable and brave character, who ends up in prison because of his former qualities.

This and the fact that a great deal of the story has already happened before the hero gets involved, require flashbacks galore.