Living somewhere in present-day Quebec, Boris Malinowski has achieved all his goals. A freethinker, open-minded and proud, he also displays a certain arrogance when it comes to his successes. For some time now, his wife Béatrice, a Canadian government minister, has been bedridden, suffering from a mysterious depression. To escape from his wife’s agony, Boris begins a relationship with a colleague, Helga, and gets close to Klara, a young woman who works as a maid in Boris’s home. The sudden appearance of a stranger in his life forces Boris to come face-to-face with the world, with everything he takes for granted, with all his certainties.

The Swede (Marlon Brando), a prison warden, rules his family and his prison with an iron hand in one of the coldest parts of North Dakota. When an inmate dies under mysterious circumstances, however, the FBI sends in agent Karen Polarski (Mira Sorvino) to investigate. On the home front, the sons-in-law of the Swede, Larry (Thomas Haden Church) and Bud (Charlie Sheen) accidentally discover that a train loaded with millions of dollars of unmarked currency slated to be destroyed will soon be passing through. The temptation is too great and the guys hatch a scheme to rob the train. Of course, the biggest obstacle in their way is the Swede.