Grimm is a burned out New Yorker who's down on his luck. He longs to escape his miserable life in New York City - and the country - but is lacking the means to do so. Desperate, he dresses up as a
clown and robs a bank in
midtown Manhattan. He sets up a daring hostage situation tying fake dynamite all over his waist and successfully steals $1 million along with his accomplices: girlfriend Phyllis and best friend Loomis. The heist itself is smooth and uneventful, but the getaway proves problematic. The relatively simple act of getting to the airport to catch a flight out of the country is complicated by the fact that fate, luck, and all of
New York City appear to be conspiring against their escape. To begin with, the trio is seeking the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to get to the airport, but the signs were removed during construction work, resulting in the three robbers becoming lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood in
Brooklyn. Then, a thug robs the trio of everything they have (except the bank money, which they have taped under their clothes). After changing into new clothes at Phyllis's apartment, they are confronted and nearly gunned down by the
paranoid schizophrenic tenant. At the same time, a fire has broken out across the street and the fire department arrives and pushes their car away from a hydrant only to cause it to roll downhill and then down an embankment. When the three crooks eventually manage to flag down a cab, the foreign driver does not understand English. This causes an emotional Loomis to jump out of the moving cab to grab another, but he runs into a newsstand, knocking himself unconscious. The driver leaves, thinking he has killed Loomis. An anal-retentive bus driver, a run-in with mobsters, and Phyllis's increasing desperation to tell Grimm the news that she is pregnant with his child add further complications. All the while, Rotzinger, a world-weary but relentless chief of the
New York City Police Department, is doggedly attempting to nab the fleeing trio. A meeting on board an airliner at the airport occurs between the robbers and the chief, who gets the added prize of having a major crime boss dropped in his lap with their assistance. Unfortunately, the chief only realizes who they were after their plane has taken off. ==Cast==