In the rural Ozarks of Missouri, seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly looks after her mentally ill mother, Connie, twelve-year-old brother Sonny, and six-year-old sister Ashlee. She makes sure her siblings eat and teaches them survival skills such as hunting and cooking. The family is destitute. Ree's father, Jessup, has not been home for a long time; his whereabouts are unknown. He is out on bail following an arrest for manufacturing meth. Sheriff Baskin tells Ree that if her father does not appear for his court date, they will lose the house because it was put up as part of his bond. Ree sets out to find her father. She starts with her meth-addicted uncle Teardrop and continues to more distant kin, eventually trying to talk to the local crime boss, Thump Milton. Milton refuses to see her; the only information Ree comes up with are warnings to leave the situation alone and stories that Jessup died in a meth lab fire or skipped town to avoid the trial. When Jessup fails to appear for the trial, the bondsman comes looking for him and tells Ree that she has about a week before the house and land are seized. Ree tells him that Jessup must be dead, because "Dollys don't run". He tells her that she must provide proof that her father is dead to avoid the bond being forfeited. Ree tries to go see Milton again and is severely beaten by the women of his family. Teardrop rescues Ree, promising her attackers that she will not cause more trouble. Teardrop tells Ree that her father was killed because he was going to inform on other meth cookers, but he does not know who killed him. He warns her that if she finds out who did, she must not tell him because he will seek revenge. Ree is driven home by Teardrop, where her injuries are taken care of by Gail and other women of Rathlin Valley. Later, Ree talks to an Army recruiter about enlisting for the $40,000 bonus, but he tells her that she needs her parents' signatures to enlist and that she is trying to enlist for the wrong reasons. On the way home from a bar and, after antagonising some of Thump's henchmen, Ree and her uncle are pulled over by the sheriff, who wants to question Teardrop. After a tense standoff, where Teardrop implies that he knows the Sheriff leaked that Jessup was an informer, Teardrop drives off. A few nights later, the Milton women who beat Ree come to her house and offer to take her to " daddy's bones". The women place a sack on her head and drive her to a pond, where they row to the shallow area where her father's submerged body lies. They tell Ree to reach into the water and grasp her father's hands so they can cut them off with a chainsaw; the severed hands will serve as proof of death for the authorities. Ree takes the hands to the sheriff, telling him that someone flung them onto the porch of her house. The bondsman gives Ree the cash portion of the bond, which was put up by an anonymous associate of Jessup. Ree tries to give Jessup's banjo to Teardrop, but he tells her to keep it at the house for him. As he is leaving, he tells her that he now knows who killed her father. Ree reassures Sonny and Ashlee that she will never leave them. As the three sit on the porch, Ashlee begins to play their father's banjo.

The story is presented as a flashback of Max Eriksson, a Vietnam veteran. A platoon of American soldiers led by Lieutenant Reilly is ambushed by Viet Cong (VC) after a panicked soldier exposes their position during a night patrol. Eriksson falls into a VC tunnel entrance, and Eriksson's squad leader, Sergeant Tony Meserve, pulls him from the hole as the platoon breaks contact. While resting by a river village in the Central Highlands, the platoon is again ambushed by VC. One of Meserve's friends, Specialist 4 "Brownie" Brown, is killed, leaving Meserve deeply affected. The platoon is ordered to return to their base. Frustrated because his squad has been denied leave for an extended period, Meserve orders the squad to kidnap a Vietnamese girl to take with them on their next mission, an extended reconnaissance patrol. Eriksson's objections are ignored, and he voices his concerns to his closest friend, Rowan, before Meserve leads him out of camp, along with Corporal Thomas E. Clark, Private First Class Herbert Hatcher, and Private First Class Antonio Dìaz, a replacement radio operator. The squad enters a village after nightfall and kidnap a Vietnamese girl, Tran Thi Oanh. The squad treks into the mountains seeking privacy for their planned sexual assault, and Dìaz begins to reconsider his part in kidnapping Tran and begs Eriksson to stand up to Meserve with him. The group enters an abandoned hooch, and when Eriksson is threatened by Meserve, Clark and Hatcher, Dìaz gives in to peer pressure and leaves Eriksson isolated in his opposition. Meserve forces Eriksson to stand guard while the men take turns raping Tran. At daybreak, Eriksson is ordered to guard Tran while the rest of the squad takes up a position near a railroad bridge overlooking a Viet Cong river supply depot. Eriksson has earned Tran's trust and prepares to desert in order to return Tran to her family, but he is ordered to take Tran to the bridge before he can carry out his plan. Meserve requests close air support for an assault on the depot and orders Dìaz to kill Tran with a knife. To prevent the murder, Eriksson fires his rifle into the air, alerting the nearby Viet Cong. Tran, repeatedly stabbed by Clark, tries to escape during the ensuing firefight. Meserve subdues Eriksson with his rifle butt and the squad shoots Tran numerous times, knocking her off the bridge to her death. Eriksson wakes up in a field hospital and tells Rowan everything that happened. He suggests reporting to Reilly and company commander Captain Hill, but they prefer to bury the matter. When Eriksson presses the issue, Hill decides to transfer him to a tunnel rat unit and reassign the men in Meserve's squad. After narrowly escaping an attempt by Clark to kill him in the latrine with a grenade, Eriksson assaults him with a shovel. Meserve realizes that killing Eriksson is unnecessary because no one cares about the crime. Shaken, Meserve dismisses Eriksson as crazy. The incident is finally investigated after Erikkson discusses it with an Army chaplain. The four men who participated in the rape and murder are court-martialed and convicted. Meserve receives ten years' imprisonment at hard labor and a dishonorable discharge, Clark receives life in prison, and Hatcher and Diaz receive fifteen and eight years of hard labor, respectively. Eriksson awakens from a nightmare to find himself on a transit line in San Francisco, just a few seats from a Vietnamese-American student who resembles Tran. She disembarks at Dolores Park and forgets her scarf, prompting Eriksson to run after her to return it. As she thanks him and turns away, he calls after her in Vietnamese. She surmises that she reminds him of someone and that he has had a bad dream, but assures him that "it's over now."

In 2005, David Packouz, a massage therapist living in Miami, Florida with his girlfriend Iz, spends his life savings on an unsuccessful venture to sell bedsheets to retirement homes. David runs into his old friend Efraim Diveroli, whose company, AEY Inc., sells arms to the US government for the war in Iraq. Efraim explains that all military equipment contracts up for bidding are posted on a public website, and he bids on small orders that, although ignored by larger contractors, are still worth millions of dollars. After Iz informs David she is pregnant, Efraim offers him a job at AEY. David accepts, but he lies to Iz, telling her they will be selling sheets to the military; when she later learns the truth, she tells him she understands what he is doing, but insists that he stop lying to her. Efraim gives David a crash course on arms dealing and introduces him to his silent partner, businessman Ralph Slutsky, who funds AEY’s deals under the false belief that the company only sells arms to protect Israel. David and Efraim land a contract to provide 5,000 Beretta pistols to the Iraqi police, but they have to circumvent an Italian embargo by sending the shipment to Baghdad through Jordan, where it is seized by customs. If they fail to deliver the pistols, AEY will be blacklisted from future contracts. They fly to Jordan, bribe local officials to release the shipment, and, with a smuggler, take it into Iraq themselves by truck. They are paid handsomely for driving it through the “ Triangle of Death ”. David again lies to Iz, telling her he was in Jordan the whole time. AEY expands its operations and David's daughter Ella is born, while Efraim grows more unstable and untrustworthy. The company has a chance at a contract to supply 100 million rounds of AK-47 ammunition to the Afghan military at a time when this ammunition is in short supply. At a convention, David and Efraim encounter arms dealer Henry Girard, who has sole access to massive stocks of unused Soviet-era weapons in Albania that the Albanians are required by NATO to liquidate. Barred from dealing directly with the US, Girard proposes to sell AEY the ammunition it needs. AEY wins the contract. Before David leaves for eight weeks in Albania to supervise the loading of the ammunition, Iz, who is fed up with David lying to her, leaves him to stay at her mother's with Ella. In Albania, David discovers the ammunition is Chinese -made and thus illegal under a US embargo, so Efraim has it repackaged to mask its origin. On learning Henry has charged them a 400% markup, Efraim decides, despite David’s protests, to cut Henry out of the deal. Henry retaliates by having David kidnapped, beaten, and threatened at gunpoint, leading David to return to Miami to confront Efraim. As David is about to leave, Enver, the Albanian handling the repackaging, tells him he has been paid nothing; David promises Enver to get his money wired to him from Miami. On returning to Miami, David quits AEY and demands compensation for his work on the Afghan deal, but Efraim refuses to pay him anything. David returns to working as a massage therapist and convinces Iz to move back in with him after telling her the truth about AEY. Three months later, Efraim, with Ralph serving as a mediator, offers David a paltry severance package; David tells Ralph what they have been doing, unaware that Ralph is wearing a listening device for the FBI. They have been denounced by Enver, who was never paid. David and Efraim are arrested. Efraim is sentenced to four years in prison, while David pleads guilty and is sentenced to seven months of house arrest. Some time later, Henry contacts David and apologizes for abducting him in Albania; he also thanks David for not mentioning him in his testimony and offers him a briefcase full of money he made from the Afghan deal.

After his wife leaves him, taxidermist Esteban Espinosa accepts an invitation to go hunting with his friend Sontag in a remote Patagonian forest. They stay at a cabin owned by Dietrich and run by his much younger wife Diana and her brother Julio. She lends Espinosa a rifle. While hunting, Sontag attempts to shoot a deer, but it is startled and escapes when Espinosa steps on a branch. Sontag realises Espinosa did it on purpose and returns to the cabin. Alone in the woods, Espinosa has an epileptic seizure. He awakens and attempts to shoot the deer himself, but accidentally kills Dietrich instead. Espinosa takes Dietrich's cellphone and returns to the cabin. Dietrich's dog smells him and recognises its owner's scent. At night, two men—Sosa and Montero—appear looking for Dietrich but leave after not finding him. Through Dietrich's cellphone, Espinosa learns from a man named Vega of a heist to a factory. He heads to the factory and witnesses the failed heist. He follows Vega, who has been mortally wounded, and takes the key hanging around his neck after he dies. Espinosa opens Dietrich's hideout in the woods, where he finds plans of a heist that consists of stealing an armoured truck carrying the earnings of a nearby casino. Sosa and Montero return and discover Espinosa has Dietrich's cellphone, so he pretends to be an accomplice of Dietrich's who learned about the heist plans before Dietrich escaped. At Dietrich's hideout, Espinosa finds documents that detail the truck's route and the larger sum of money that it will carry after a long weekend. Espinosa employs his eidetic memory to invent a plan for the heist. They decide to strike at the Eden, a bar–brothel where the guards always make a stop. Espinosa drives Diana to town and asks her about her relationship with Dietrich. She tells him Dietrich she tried leaving him before but he found her. Espinosa meets the criminals finish planning the heist. Before leaving for the robbery, Espinosa assures Diana that Dietrich will never return. Urien, an accomplice inside the casino, tells Espinosa that Vega was supposed to take the place of an extra guard inside the back of the truck—which can only be opened from the inside—due to the larger sum of money. Espinosa tries to warn Sosa, Montero, and Julio—who are robbing the truck—but has a seizure. He awakens and gets to the Eden but fails to warn the team in time. A shooting takes place and Montero is wounded. Sosa kills two guards, while the third guard is locked inside the truck. Espinosa and the criminals drive with the truck to Dietrich's hideout, where there are tools to open the truck's lock. At Montero's command, Sosa kills Julio and tries to kill Espinosa, but runs out of bullets and takes him to the workshop to get more. Espinosa grabs a hidden gun and wounds Sosa, who runs away. Espinosa runs after Sosa through the forest and manages to kill him. Espinosa sees both Montero and the remaining guard locked in the truck have bled to death. He returns for Diana but finds she has left. Espinosa takes the dog with him and returns to his life as a taxidermist.

In 1991, following the critical and commercial failure of her biography of Estée Lauder, author Lee Israel struggles with financial troubles, writer's block, and alcoholism. Her only friend is her cat, which has a health issue. Lee hopes to write a biography of comedian Fanny Brice, who died in 1951. Her literary agent Marjorie sharply rejects the idea, noting that Brice’s life no longer interests people. Marjorie explains that Lee, with her difficult personality, is responsible for her own career slump. With Marjorie unable to secure her an advance for a new book, regardless of subject matter, Lee resorts to selling her possessions to cover living expenses. She sells a personal letter she received long ago from Katharine Hepburn to a used bookstore merchant and autograph dealer named Anna. Lee begins spending time with old acquaintance Jack Hock after a chance encounter with him at a gay bar called Julius’. He reveals to her that he has been banned from all locations of the Duane Reade chain of stores because he was caught shoplifting. Lee visits a Manhattan library's special collections department to research Fanny Brice and discovers two letters typewritten by Brice. She removes one of them from the building, takes it to Anna's store, and shows it to her. Anna makes Lee an offer that is lower than what she was expecting, due to the letter's bland content. Lee returns home and uses a typewriter to add a postscript to the letter. Lee returns to the store where Anna, amused by what "Fanny Brice" wrote "several decades ago", offers Lee $350. Anna reveals to Lee that she has written some short stories and is soliciting advice about whether they are good enough to be published. The socially phobic Lee replies cautiously, as this is apparently the first time in many years that a woman has tried to befriend her and is asking for her help with getting something published. Lee uses some of the $350 Anna gave her to pay for veterinary treatment of her sick cat. The veterinary clinic previously had turned her and her cat away because of insufficient funds. Lee, emboldened by her success with selling the Brice letter, starts forging and selling letters supposedly written by deceased celebrities, incorporating intimate details to command high prices. Anna, a fan of Lee's biographies, tries to initiate a romantic relationship but may have another motive. On their dinner date, she gives Lee a manila envelope containing an original short story with the hope that Lee will critique it. Moments after they leave the restaurant, the socially phobic Lee appears to rebuff Anna. In some of Lee's letters, she has Noël Coward make references to his social life that reflects his homosexuality. A used-book dealer named Paul buys one of them from Lee and sends it to a friend of his who knew Coward. The recipient doubts Coward would have risked his privacy and relays his suspicions. Paul then raises an alarm that leads to Lee's customers blacklisting her. Unable to sell more forgeries, she has Jack sell them on her behalf, since the customers do not know he has a connection to Lee. She also starts stealing authentic letters from libraries and archives for Jack to sell, replacing them with forged duplicates. While Lee is out of town committing one such theft, she lets Jack stay in her apartment. He brings a young waiter from the gay bar Julius’ to join him there. Lee’s cat dies while under Jack’s care during the night he and the waiter spend together. Lee ends their friendship but continues their partnership out of necessity. The FBI arrests Jack while he is attempting a sale. He cooperates with them, resulting in Lee being served with a court summons. She retains a lawyer, who advises her to show contrition by getting a job, doing community service, and joining Alcoholics Anonymous. In court Lee says she enjoyed creating the forgeries but that her actions were ultimately not worth it because she lost her cat and her friendship with her criminal accomplice. He “may have been an idiot, but he tolerated me, and he was nice to have around.” The judge sentences Lee to five years' probation and six months' house arrest. During house arrest Lee skips her court-ordered AA meeting to meet with Jack, who is dying of AIDS, at the gay bar Julius’. They reconcile. Lee does not comment on or ask about his health. He grants her permission to write a memoir about their escapades. Sometime later, while Lee is passing a bookstore, she sees a Dorothy Parker letter she forged that is now on sale for $1,900. She writes the store owner a sarcastic note from the deceased Parker revealing that the letter is a fake. After reading the note, the owner goes to retrieve the letter but then decides to keep it on display.

Margaret "Marnie" Edgar, posing under the identity Marion Holland, flees with nearly $10,000 that she stole from the company safe of her employer, Sidney Strutt. Strutt is the head of a tax consulting company, where Marnie had worked after charming him into hiring her without references. Mark Rutland, a wealthy widower who owns a publishing company in Philadelphia, meets with Strutt on business; he learns about the theft and recalls Marnie from a previous visit. Marnie travels to Virginia, where she stables a horse named Forio. She then visits her invalid mother, Bernice, whom she supports financially, in Baltimore. Marnie suffers from recurring nightmares and has an intense aversion to the color red, which triggers her hysteria. Some months later, Marnie, posing as Mary Taylor, applies for a job at Mark's company. Although recognizing her, Mark hires her, cryptically telling his co-worker who questions hiring an applicant without references that he is an "interested spectator." While working weekend overtime with Mark, Marnie has a panic attack during a thunderstorm. Mark comforts, then kisses her. As they begin dating Mark discusses his background in zoology, particularly showing a fascination with predatory behavior. During a date at a racetrack, Mark fends off a persistent man who approaches Marnie, addressing her by another name, who Marnie insists she does not know. Soon afterwards, Marnie steals money from Mark's company and flees again. Based on Marnie's comments on horses, Mark tracks her to the stable where she keeps Forio. Under threat of disclosure, Mark blackmails Marnie into marrying him, much to the chagrin of Lil, Mark's late wife's sister, who is in love with him. On their honeymoon cruise, Marnie resists Mark's desire for physical intimacy, revealing that she finds sex repellent. Initially respecting her wishes, Mark tries to woo her, but after a few nights, they quarrel over Marnie's aloofness; Mark persists in physical advances while she freezes without consent. The next morning, Marnie attempts to drown herself in the ship's swimming pool, but Mark saves her. After overhearing Marnie on a phone call, Lil tips off Mark that Marnie's mother is not dead, as Marnie claimed. Mark hires a private detective to investigate. Meanwhile, Lil overhears Mark telling Marnie he has "paid off Strutt" on her behalf. Lil mischievously invites Strutt and his wife to a party at the Rutland mansion. Strutt recognizes Marnie, but Mark pressures him into doing nothing. When Marnie later admits to additional robberies, Mark works to reimburse her victims to drop charges. Mark brings Forio to their estate, pleasing Marnie. During a fox hunt, the red riding coat worn by one of the hunters triggers another of Marnie's fits and Forio bolts, misses a jump, injures its legs, and is left lying on the ground screaming in pain. Marnie frantically runs to a nearby house, obtains a gun, and euthanizes her horse. Overcome with grief, Marnie goes home, where she takes the key to Mark's office. She goes to the office and opens the safe, but finds herself unable to take the money. Mark arrives and "urges" her to take the money, testing her new reluctance to theft, but Marnie resists. Mark takes Marnie to Baltimore to confront her mother and uncover the truth about Marnie's past. They arrive in a thunderstorm. As it is revealed that Bernice was a prostitute, Marnie's long-suppressed memories resurface. When Marnie was a small child, Bernice's sailor client tried to calm a frightened Marnie during a thunderstorm. Seeing him touch Marnie and believing he was trying to molest her, Bernice attacked him. As the sailor fended her off, Bernice fell and injured her leg, leaving her disabled. Frightened and attempting to protect her mother, Marnie fatally struck the man in the head with a fireplace poker. The sight of streaming blood caused her aversion to the color red, the thunderstorm that night caused her fear of them, and the connection of the deadly event to sex caused her revulsion at physical intimacy. To protect Marnie, Bernice told police that Bernice killed the man and prayed Marnie would forget the event. Understanding the reason behind her behavior, Marnie asks for Mark's help. They leave holding each other closely.

The film is set shortly before Christmas in the North Country of Upstate New York, near the Akwesasne ('Where the Partridge Drums') St. Regis Mohawk Reservation and the border crossing to Cornwall, Ontario. Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a discount store clerk struggling to raise two sons with her husband, a compulsive gambler who has disappeared with the funds she had earmarked to finance the purchase of a double-wide mobile home. While searching for him, she encounters Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a Mohawk bingo-parlor employee who is driving his car, which she claims she found abandoned with the keys in the ignition at the local bus station. The two women, who have both fallen on hard economic times, form a desperate and uneasy alliance and begin smuggling undocumented immigrants from Canada into the United States across the frozen St. Lawrence River for $1,200 each. Ray's older son T.J. wants to find a job and help support the family so they can afford to eat something more substantial than popcorn and Tang. He and his mother clash over whether he should remain in high-school and look after his little brother Ricky or drop out to work. To make matters worse, T.J. sets an outside corner of the trailer afire with a torch in an attempt to unfreeze the water pipe. Lila longs for the day she will be able to reclaim and live with her young son, who was taken from her by her mother-in-law immediately after his birth. Because the women's route takes them from an Indian reservation in the US to an Indian reserve in Canada, they hope to avoid detection by local law-enforcement. However, their problems escalate when they are asked to smuggle a Pakistani couple and Ray, fearful their duffel bag might contain explosives, leaves it behind in sub-freezing temperatures, only to discover it contained their infant baby when they arrive at their destination. She and Lila retrace their route and find the bag and the baby, which Lila insists is dead, but which she revives moments before being reunited with the baby's parents. The experience leaves her shaken, and she announces she no longer wants to participate in the smuggling operation. But Ray, needing just one more crossing to finance the down payment on her mobile home, coerces her into joining her for one last journey. They pick up two Asian women from a strip club for crossing. When the club owner tries to short them, Ray successfully threatens him with a gun. When she is re-entering her car, the irate club owner retaliates by shooting Ray in the ear. Shaken, her fast and erratic driving catches the attention of the provincial police. Ray tries to elude capture by crossing the frozen river where one of the wheels of the car breaks through the ice. The four women abandon the vehicle and take refuge at the Indian reservation. Because the police are demanding a scapegoat, the tribal head decides to excommunicate Lila for five years due to her smuggling history which involved the death of her Mohawk husband. Surprised then saddened by the news, Ray gives in to Lila's pleas to go free for the sake of her children. However, running through the woods, Ray has a fit of conscience and returns. Ray gives her share of money to Lila with instructions for taking care of her (Ray's) sons and seeing through the purchase plans for a mobile home. Ray and the undocumented immigrants are surrendered to the police and a trooper speculates she will have to serve four months in jail. Ray calls her son T.J. to explain what has happened. Lila pushes her way into her mother-in-law's home and reclaims her infant son. She and the baby show up at the Eddy trailer while T.J. is still on the phone with his jailed mother. In a day scene, T.J. completes the welding of a bicycle-propelled carousel bearing his younger brother and Lila's strapped in baby. He pedals the carousel while Lila smiles on. A truck nears carrying the new mobile home.

Shortly after his marriage to Anastasia, Ivan Sanchin, who works as a projectionist at the headquarters of the state security service (called, anachronistically, KGB in the film), is summoned urgently to the Kremlin. Having proved his skill, he is appointed private projectionist to Stalin and his inner circle, including the head of state security Beria. This makes him proud and happy, for he venerates the dictator as if he were a god. When a Russian Jewish couple in his cramped apartment house are arrested, their little daughter Katya is left behind. Though Anastasia wants to adopt the child, Ivan forbids it because her parents are " enemies of the people ”. However she secretly visits Katya at a state orphanage. As German troops approach Moscow in 1941, Ivan and Anastasia are put on a train to a safe town. Also on the train is Beria, who gets Anastasia drunk and rapes her, sending Ivan back to Moscow. For a long time he hears nothing of her until she turns up one day, pregnant and abandoned. Her experiences have unhinged her and she commits suicide. In 1953 the lonely Ivan is visited by Katya, now a 17-year-old, who treasures the memory of Anastasia's affection. Ivan offers help, but she says she wants to go her own way. Following Stalin's death, Ivan, while on crowd control duty to masses waiting to view the corpse, sees Katya being jostled in the crush. He rushes in to rescue her and, this time, she is ready to accept his protection.

Spencer Reinhard, an art student seeking excitement or tragedy for inspiration, is given a tour of Transylvania University library's rare-book collection; his eye is drawn to a rare first edition of John James Audubon 's Birds of America. He and his friend Warren Lipka, a rebellious student on an athletic scholarship at the University of Kentucky, discuss the possibility of stealing it and other rare books. They note that the collection is guarded by only one librarian, whom they believe they could easily overpower before stealing the books and escaping via the staff elevator. Warren travels to Amsterdam to meet black-market buyers who express interest, informing Spencer they could make millions. They later enlist the help of two friends: Eric Borsuk to provide logistics and Chas Allen as the getaway driver. They make an appointment for a private viewing of the collection in order to gain access to the room, and arrive disguised as elderly businessmen; but they abort the heist when Warren sees multiple librarians in the room. Spencer wants to abandon the plan, but Warren persuades him and the others to try again the next day. Spencer acts as a lookout as Warren and Eric, without disguises, enter the library. Warren clumsily uses a stun gun on the librarian, making Eric help restrain her. They blunder to the exit, dropping The Birds of America, but escape with two books. The group travels to Christie's auction house in New York to get the authentication of value Warren said the Dutch buyers required. Spencer is told he has to return the next day and leaves his cell phone number with an assistant. Chas berates Spencer for using a phone number that can be identified as his, and they return to Lexington with the books. Shortly after, Spencer realizes the police will also be able to trace the email address they used to make the appointments with Christie's and the library; the FBI eventually does, and they are arrested. In documentary interviews with the real-life thieves filmed years after they are released from prison, they express regret. Spencer suspects Warren lied about going to Amsterdam in order to convince the others to partake in the heist. Eric and Chas now live in California as a writer and a fitness coach, respectively; Warren studies filmmaking in Philadelphia; and Spencer lives in Lexington as an artist.

Buddy Ackerman, an influential movie mogul, hires Guy, a naïve young writer, as his assistant. Guy, who had just graduated from film school, believes that his new job is a golden opportunity. Despite warnings from Rex, the outgoing assistant who has become hardened under Buddy's reign, Guy remains optimistic. Buddy turns out to be the boss from hell; he treats Guy like a slave, subjects him to sadistic (and public) verbal abuse, and has him bending over backward to do meaningless errands that go beyond just his work life. Guy is humiliated and forced to bear the brunt of his insults. Guy's only solace is his new girlfriend Dawn, a producer at Buddy's firm. When Buddy apparently fires Guy in a phone call, Guy finally snaps and takes Buddy hostage in order to exact revenge. He ties Buddy up and subjects him to severe beatings, torture and mind games. It is later revealed that due to a botched call waiting function on Buddy's home phone, Guy hears Buddy and Dawn arranging a rendezvous at Buddy's house. Once in Guy's power, Buddy reveals for the first time a human, vulnerable side. He tells Guy that his wife had been shot, raped, and murdered on Christmas Eve twelve years prior, and reveals that he, too, was once a bullied assistant to powerful, tyrannical men and spent a decade putting up with such abuse to become successful himself. He also reveals that abusing Guy was his way of teaching Guy that he must earn his success. Dawn arrives at the scene to find Guy aiming a gun at Buddy's face and insists that she had only agreed to see Buddy as a way of helping Guy's career. Dawn pleads with Guy to put down the gun, whereupon Buddy tells Guy that he has to pull the trigger in order to get ahead in the business. After a moment's indecision, Buddy screams at Guy to shoot, which Guy does. It is revealed that Guy killed Dawn, who is blamed for kidnapping and torturing Buddy, and was subsequently promoted. Later, Guy coldly tells a former colleague to find out what he really wants and then do anything to get it, echoing the numerous times Buddy told Guy. A beaten up Buddy then passes by Guy's office, making eye contact with him and silently gesturing to call him into his office for a meeting. Guy excuses himself and goes into Buddy's office, ignoring his ringing telephone. Buddy shuts his office doors as other employees walk by.