In 1935 the Great Depression-era convicts, Ned and Jim, jailed on never-specified charges and abused by a ruthless warden, are dragged along when a vicious killer named Bobby escapes the electric chair.

The two end up in a small upstate New York town near the Canada–US border, where they are mistaken for a pair of priests expected at the local monastery.

Black, Robert De Niro and Sean Penn were "a bankable duo who Paramount would have been unconcerned about throwing a significant budget toward, produced by an impresario with proven hits at his back, written by a celebrated wordsmith and helmed by an acclaimed young director breaking into the studio system."

We're No Angels is a movie made for those faces, and one of the pleasures of watching the film is to see them looking sidelong at each other as they try to figure a way out of the complicated mess they're in.

"[4] In a retrospective review from 2019, critic John Hansen wrote "We're No Angels was probably hurt by being unappealing on the surface to both religious and non-religious moviegoers, with both groups assuming the film isn't for them.