Sonny is a desperate man, an outsider to society, who sees no options except breaking the rules to get what he needs. He is a Vietnam Veteran, with some background experience working in a bank, is bisexual (married to a man and a woman simultaneously) and strongly suspicious of authority. When faced with the failure of the bank robbery, Sonny refuses to give in, perhaps because Sal, his partner, is a psychopath who would choose to shoot the hostages and kill himself in order not to be captured. Sonny improvises a wild plan that somewhere deep inside he knows could never succeed, but which does make it possible for the police to rescue the hostages from Sal. In the meantime, as the film unfolds, we come to see Sonny as a sympathetic, if misguided, product of an uncaring society.