Young police Sergeant David Waters and his older boss and friend Lieutenant Jim Stone both work in the Evidence Management unit of the
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Disillusioned and bored with their jobs, they also find it hard to make ends meet financially. While looking through case files, Jim comes across a mysterious case: a low level
drug dealer who was bailed out of jail—paid for with $200,000 in cash—indicating that this dealer has access to large amounts of money. Using his vacation days, Jim conducts unapproved undercover surveillance at the hotel where the drug dealer works. He discovers that all of the merchandise that the dealer's gang moves is taken to one building, and never moved out. David acquires blueprints from the county planning office and discovers that the gang has built a large safe in the back of an industrial freezer in the building. Realizing it is unguarded, Jim and David decide to break into the safe and steal the contents. They map out the exact location of the safe and acquire a floor-standing drill press and a diamond-tipped drill from Germany to drill into the safe door. They also buy black market firearms to use instead of their
service pistols, paying for everything with illegally acquired cash from a corrupt colleague. The complicated plan requires them to drill into the safe door from the residential apartment above the freezer, to allow them to attack the safe without triggering "failsafe" door locks. Much of the heist is planned in meticulous detail, but the plan for dealing with whoever is in the targeted apartment is left unclear. On the day of the theft, the two break into the apartment above the freezer, but they do not handle the two occupants, a man and a woman, very well. They restrain and muffle the two, but Jim ends up shooting and killing the man after a spitting incident goes bad. They use up two regular drill bits going through the concrete that divides the two spaces. They then use the diamond-tipped drill to go into the safe door, but the drill press stops working when a drive belt breaks. Having no spare belts, the two build an
improvised explosive to finish the hole. Once the hole is completed, Jim watches the safe's tumblers using a long flexible
cystoscope, while David manipulates the safe's dial. As each number is identified, David writes it on the safe door. When the door is opened, the two discover that the high-tech vault is filled with extraordinary high-value gems and cash. Jim is elated, but David becomes concerned that stealing so many valuables from the gang will get them tracked down and killed. They decide to return to the apartment to clean up, in preparation to leave, and David locks the safe behind him as the two go back upstairs. In the apartment, David, becomes empathetic for the surviving female hostage. She asks David to call her husband, so she can make sure that her 3-year-old son is taken care of—David agrees and the woman has a very brief conversation with whoever answers the phone. They break down the drillbit and discuss what is left to be done before they leave. When Jim and David return to the safe, Jim discovers that David not only re-locked the safe door, but also erased the combination numbers. Enraged, Jim threatens David at gunpoint, forcing him to open the safe. The valuables are loaded into bags and Jim begins loading bags into their van. But when David goes to kill the woman, he gets cold feet and shoots Jim instead. After a brief shootout, Jim is finally killed. David returns all the valuables back into the safe and loads the woman hostage into the van, promising her that he will release her when they get far enough away from the city. As they are driving on a deserted stretch of road, the van is surrounded by other vehicles, including a contractor's truck marked with a company's phone number—the same phone number that the woman had David call earlier. David attempts to identify himself as a police officer, but he is shot dead, and the movie closes with physical evidence from the car and heist being catalogued and stored in the Evidence Management building where David and Jim used to work. ==Cast==