Eddie and Jean lead a simple life. They met, fell in love, got married, bought a house and were going to have a baby. It was a good life—except that Jean couldn’t have children.
But that wasn’t a problem either. They would just adopt—except that Eddie’s criminal record prevented that.
So, every morning, Eddie kisses Jean and leaves the house. And Jean is left alone. That is, until Eddie randomly comes home with a child in his arms.
“Who’s that?” Jean asks.
“He’s our baby,” Eddie replies.
It’s not that Jean doesn’t want this new addition to their family, it’s just that she gave up the hope of ever having a child. And she’s understandably a little freaked.
Things get even more shifty when Eddie tells her he won’t be coming home one night. Jean’s used to that pattern, since Eddie is a thief and often “works” late. However, what she’s not used to is someone banging on her door in the middle of the night telling her that she has to flee.
See, Eddie messed up. He killed a crime boss. And now people have questions. Questions about where Eddie is. Questions they think Jean knows the answers to.
Except that she doesn’t. She might have known her husband was a criminal, but beyond that, she’s just as much in the dark as the rest of them. So, Jean grabs her new baby, Harry, and runs, hoping that someone will figure out the answers soon.
Jean struggles at first to bond with baby Harry. Because she had given up all hope of being a mother, she is out of touch with her instincts and chastises herself for every failure. But as she and Harry are put into increasingly dangerous situations, she finds herself doing whatever it takes to protect her child.
Cal, a man who used to work with Eddie, helps Jean and Harry get to safety. He protects them from people looking for Eddie and even takes them to his own family’s cabin when their first safe house is compromised.
Teri, Cal’s wife, sympathizes with Jean’s situation since she went through the exact same scenario with her first husband. She understands the difficulties of raising a child in a criminal environment and offers kind words to Jean, knowing that she’s doing her best.
We learn that Harry’s biological mother was going to be disowned by her family for having a child out of wedlock. Eddie offered to pay for the girl’s medical expenses in exchange for the child, saving the baby and the mother at the same time (in the movie’s moral logic).
Strangers comfort Jean when she breaks down in a laundromat. Her neighbor offers support when she realizes Jean is exhausted from raising Harry alone. A landlord helps Teri and Jean sneak out the back of an apartment building when men come looking for them. A woman tells a boy to shut his eyes so that he won’t be traumatized by seeing dead bodies.
Jean quotes the prayer of St. Francis and says it’s the one thing she retained from Catholic school.
Couples kiss and embrace. We learn that Teri and Cal had an affair with each other, ending her marriage; previous husband allowed the split to be amicable since he cared for both of them.
Masked men enter a nightclub and start shooting dozens of people, causing a panic. Several people are shot and killed in other scenes. (One man is shot through the forehead at point-blank range.) A woman gets tied up and gagged for her association with Jean, and she’s later killed. We see several dead bodies from a shootout.
Teri, Cal and Jean are chased in a car. Their vehicle is hit several times by their pursuers, and they eventually wreck. All three are injured, and the passengers of the other car are killed. Jean gets violently dragged from the wreckage and thrown into another vehicle.
Jean sees that Cal is bleeding from a gunshot wound. We learn that Eddie has killed several people in his line of “work,” and that he also shot a man’s ear off. Gunshots are heard in the background of some scenes. Jean learns how to use a gun.
We hear the f-word seven times and the s-word twice. There are two uses each of “h—” and “a–hole.” Jesus’ name is misused once.
People drink and smoke throughout the film. Jean smokes in front of Harry, but only when they are outside. Cal doesn’t smoke, but he goes through the motion of using an unlit cigarette because it helps curb his craving.
Jean becomes angry when nobody is able to offer her answers regarding Eddie’s whereabouts. She starts to learn secrets about her husband’s past—such as the fact that he was previously married—and realizes that he is quite different, and much more dangerous than she realized.
When people enter her house, Jean is forced to grab Harry and hide in a closet to avoid detection. She hides several other times from would-be murderers, too, and narrowly escapes.
People lie, blackmail, gamble and steal. After Jean and Cal fall asleep in a car, a trooper questions them, racially profiling Cal and believing he is hassling Jean.
Jean’s whole world is knocked upside down when she and Harry are forced to go into hiding. She’s never even been on her own before, and she suddenly she finds herself on the run with another human being depending on her for survival.
But the two people helping her, Teri and Cal, are willing to do whatever it takes to protect their family—lie, steal, even kill. And as she bonds with them over shared circumstances, Jean realizes she’s willing to do the same.
The film doesn’t try to glamorize a life of crime by any means—this isn’t Bonnie and Clyde. People are killed mercilessly; children are put into life-threatening situations, and families are torn asunder. However, being exposed to that lifestyle helps Jean to realize what she really wants, or rather, what she doesn’t want.
Eddie may not have been the man she thought he was. But as it turns out, Jean isn’t the woman she thought she was, either. And as she looks back on what her life used to be, she’s reminded that she doesn’t need to look back. She just needs to look forward and focus on her new future with her son.
Jean’s unusual story of empowerment and self-discovery amid violence and threats is oddly inspiring in some ways. But let’s not get carried away: This R-rated thriller’s gratuitous violence and peppering of foul language will make it a hard pass for many viewers.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
