 When an ex-con learns from a newspaper advertisement that his estranged son of seven years plans to go down the falls in a barrel as a publicity stunt to get money, he realizes he must stop him. He then decides to rob the local lottery winner to get his son the money. However, the robbery goes awry and the father finds himself pursued by the police as the robbery implicates him indirectly in a murder. Meanwhile, demons of his past haunt him as he is inexorably drawn toward a fate intertwined with the falls.