It's 1988 and Shelley Cooper is in trouble. He's broke, he's been fired from his construction job, and his ex-wife has left him for their next-door neighbor and a new life in Kansas City. The only opportunity on his horizon is 50 pounds of his brother's high-grade marijuana, which needs to be driven from Colorado to Houston and exchanged for a lockbox full of cash. The delivery goes off without a hitch, but getting home with the money proves to be a different challenge altogether. Fueled by a grab bag of resentments and self punishment, Shelley becomes a case study in the question of whether it's possible to live without accepting yourself, and the dope money is the key to a lock he might never find.