The film stars Val Kilmer, Charles Durning, Sônia Braga, Kyra Sedgwick, James Keach, Elisha Cook, Jr. and Clancy Brown.

Robert Elliott Burns is having flashbacks of the horrors of World War I and is on the streets protesting for himself angry at his inability to find a job and society's apathy towards veterans.

He has iron chains attached to his legs and meets the warden, Harold Hardy, a fat, angry, and spiteful man of Irish descent who hates people from the North.

Hardy calls him a "Yankee" and tells him to feel guilty and get used to chain gang life to make it easier on himself.

Burns is introduced to a foul shack of filthy, exhausted men and meets an elderly prisoner, Pappy Glue who laughs at him when he says he didn't commit the crime he was imprisoned for.

He is introduced to an inedible meal of pig fat, bitter corn pone, and sorghum molasses and gags trying to eat it and gives his plate to a veteran prisoner enjoying and devouring it.

The men are taken to a quarry to dig rocks out of the ground with pick axes for 15 hours a day, with only a short lunch break of red beans and corn mush.

That night after work, Seals is hung upside down and beaten several times with a leather strap by Trump and left there overnight.

The next day, the men are digging out dirt with pick axes and Burns is struggling to "keep the lick" towards the end of their shift.

During a lunch break, Burns talks Big Sam into bending his shackles with the sledgehammer by hitting it against the track.

A year later, Burns is now living in Chicago and rents a room from Emily Pacheco, a Portuguese divorcee.

She keeps trying to get Burns' interest, but he's not in love with her and just doesn't feel the chemistry, but nevertheless, they sleep together after he reveals to her about trying to start a magazine business and be a statesman.

One day while cleaning Burns' room, Emily comes across some papers he's been typing and there are flashbacks to his time on the chain gang being put in a sweatbox and treated like an animal.

Burns makes it home that night after a very successful day of selling his first magazine subscription and she reveals the papers he's written.

The official says if extradition is granted, he will have to go back to Georgia and serve the remainder of his sentence, plus additional time for escaping.

It turns out that Big Sam clubbed a guard and was moved to another prison in Southern Georgia and Pappy Glue died from beatings soon after Burns escaped.

That night at dinner, Hardy reads out a list of men not doing a hard days work and for them to get their whipping.

Warden Hardy informs Burns that he won't live to see himself get out despite people from up north trying to do so, and that the parole board turned him down.

The man is apprehensive, knowing he risks being put on the same chain gang, but Burns promises him another $50 if he can get him over the state line.

Some time later, Burns is seen typing his new book which says that he is a fugitive, he moves around a lot and can't keep jobs for long.

Burns briefly visits his brother about his situation, who tells him there are several people asking to have movie rights to the book.

Burns anonymously attends a screening of the movie I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and has flashbacks to his time there.

Phone calls, telegrams, and letters flood the Georgia Department of Corrections demanding a reform of the prison system.

It is noted that Robert Elliot Burns finally received a pardon after many years of struggle in 1944 and that the Georgia chain gang system was abolished.