English professor Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is a high stakes gambler who routinely loses hundreds of thousands of dollars at blackjack and roulette tables. A risk taker, he's already in debt for $200,000 when he borrows $60,000 from a brutal gangster named Neville (Michael Kenneth Williams), putting up his own life as collateral.

Bennett blows the $260,000 his mother (Jessica Lange) gives him to bail him out during a single trip to a Palm Springs Casino and immerses himself in an illicit, underground world while garnering the attention of loan shark Frank (John Goodman). It isn't until Bennett develops a relationship with student Amy Phillips (Brie Larson) and she's threatened, that he finds himself taking the ultimate risk to get a second chance.