It's the late 1980s and low-level mobster Giacomo "Jackie Dee" DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) has just been shot by his junkie cousin Tony Compagna, but refuses to press charges against him to police. Jackie soon gets arrested and is sentenced to thirty years on an unrelated drug bust.

Tony, afraid of reprisals from the extended mob family run by Nick Calabrese, agrees to be a government witness for district attorney Sean Kierney (Linus Roache), who intends to bring down dozens of organized crime figures all at once. Kierney tries to bribe Jackie to be a government witness as well, but it's not in the gregarious Jackie's nature to be a rat.