Jesse Lujack is a cocky,
hedonistic drifter and small-time car thief in
Las Vegas. He’s obsessed with
Silver Surfer comic books, the music of
Jerry Lee Lewis, and Monica Poiccard, a
UCLA architecture student whom he knows only from a weekend fling while she visited Vegas. Leaving Vegas, Lujack steals a
Porsche, intending to drive to
Los Angeles. As he speeds down the highway and looks through the owner's possessions, he discovers a handgun in the vehicle's glovebox, which he briefly toys with. He comes upon a highway construction roadblock and evades it. Seeing his reckless driving, a patrolman gives chase and the fleeing Lujack runs off the road and becomes stuck. When the patrolman spotlights Lujack and orders him to step away from the car, he impulsively grabs the gun and blindly shoots through the back window of the car, inadvertently fatally wounding the patrolman. A remorseful Lujack pads the dying patrolman's head with his coat and flees on foot. Arriving in L.A., Lujack finds his picture splashed all over the newspaper and TV news as the "cop killer." On the run, but unable to immediately leave the city while arranging to get paid for a previous car theft, Lujack breaks into Monica's apartment and waits for her to return home. Monica discovers him naked in her bed and initially declines his advances, but later has
sex with him in the shower. Lujack attempts to convince Monica to abscond to Mexico with him, but she is reluctant. Lujack shows up at her campus and intrudes on her presentation of a project to her professors, initially exasperating her. He continues to pursue her, showing up in various stolen cars to offer her rides. Lujack eventually wears down Monica and she succumbs to his charms once again, although still ambivalent to his insistence on leaving for Mexico. After Lujack's photograph appears in the newspaper, he is recognized on the street after dropping Monica off at a groundbreaking ceremony downtown. The police question Monica but she refuses to turn Lujack in. When the police start following her before Lujack comes back to pick her up, she finally accepts his offer to flee to Mexico together. On the way out of L.A., Lujack and Monica stop in order for Lujack to repair his latest stolen car. She walks to a nearby store and finds her picture in a newspaper alongside Lujack's. Realizing the impossibility of her romantic fantasy, she phones the police, but then returns to tell Lujack she did so. Lujack asks her if she loves him, and she says no. He laughs and says “liar”. Lujack then runs up the road to meet an accomplice he has arranged to bring his payment for the previous car theft, who throws a gun to him as well, which he refuses and allows to drop to the street. The police corner him in the road where Lujack sings "
Breathless" to Monica while dancing around the gun at his feet. The film ends in a freeze-frame of Lujack scooping up the gun and turning to face the police. ==Cast==