John Bridger, a professional safecracker, has assembled a team to steal $35 million worth of gold bullion from a safe in Venice, held by Italian gangsters who had stolen it weeks earlier. The team includes Charlie Croker, a professional fixer; Lyle or "Napster", a computer expert; Handsome Rob, their wheelman; Steve, their inside man; and Left Ear, their explosives expert. The heist is successful, but as they drive towards Austria with the bullion, they are stopped by men loyal to Steve, who had turned on them and takes the bullion for himself. Steve kills John when the latter admonishes him, and Rob drives the van over a bridge into the waters below to protect the others, using air tanks from the heist to stay alive. Steve leaves them for dead.

A year later in Philadelphia, Charlie learns that Steve has resurfaced under a new identity and is laundering the gold through a Ukrainian jeweler named Yevhen to finance his lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles. Charlie gathers the team, and also recruits John's daughter Stella, a skilled private safe expert, offering her the chance to get revenge on Steve for her father's death. They stake out Steve's mansion, and Stella, disguising herself as a cable technician, is able to map out its interior, allowing them to determine the location of Steve's safe containing the remaining bullion. Steve, unaware of Stella's identity, asks Stella to go out on a date with him. Charlie and Stella devise a plan using explosives to blow the safe while Steve is away on his supposed date, using three heavily modified Mini Coopers to transport the gold out of the mansion. Charlie enlists the help of supplier Skinny Pete for the explosives and mechanic Wrench to make the modifications on the cars.

During one of Steve's visits to Yevhen, Yevhen accidentally reveals that he knows about the Venice heist. To cover his tracks, Steve kills Yevhen, whose cousin, Mashkov, the leader of a Ukrainian crime family, traces the information about the gold back to Skinny Pete via Yevhen's ex-employee Vance.

The group embark on the night of the planned heist but discover that Steve's neighbors are having a party. As the explosives would draw attention, they cancel their plan. Stella, still having to meet Steve, inadvertently gives away her identity by using similar phrases to her father. When the team arrives to help protect her, Steve taunts them, saying that he still has the upper hand, but he secretly plans to transport the gold to Mexico City by a private plane from Los Angeles International Airport after transporting it there in an armored car. Napster hears of this through his tap on Steve's phone, and Charlie and his gang make a new plan to steal the gold en route to the airport by hijacking the city's traffic control system to force the armored car to a planned spot where they will execute the heist.

On the day of transport, they are surprised when three armored trucks leave Steve's mansion, but Napster is able to determine which one carries the bullion and manipulates the traffic accordingly. Knowing that Steve is monitoring the transport by helicopter, they get the car to the target spot and then create a diversion as they detonate explosives to drop the part of the road with the car into a subway tunnel below. After opening the truck, they find a different safe from the one that held the gold before. Although she struggles initially, Stella cracks the safe, and they load up the Coopers with the gold, now revealed to amount to $27 million. They race from the subway to the Los Angeles River and through the city, pursued by Steve's henchmen on motorcycles, with Napster creating a green wave to evade traffic. Charlie disables Steve's helicopter by damaging its tail rotor with his car, forcing it to land.

Steve commandeers a Ford Bronco to follow Charlie to Union Station, where the cars are loaded onto a train car with the help of Wrench. Steve bribes Wrench to let him in, but finds Charlie and the others waiting. He brandishes a gun and demands his gold back, but Mashkov arrives with some armed men and disarms him. Charlie explains that he has offered Mashkov part of the gold and Steve in exchange for helping with security protection (it is implied that Skinny Pete put him in touch). Stella punches Steve in the face as revenge. Mashkov then takes him away, implying he intends to torture him for killing Yevhen. The group boards the train as it departs to New Orleans, and celebrate in John's honor. The epilogue shows them all having used their share of the gold for their own desired purposes; Handsome Rob purchases an Aston Martin Vanquish, getting pulled over by a beautiful policewoman, Left Ear buys a mansion in southern Spain with a room for his shoe collection, while Napster buys a powerful stereo capable of blowing a woman's clothes off. Meanwhile, Charlie takes John's advice about finding someone he wants to spend the rest of his life with, and he and Stella travel to Venice together.