Description
Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is a cocky, hedonistic drifter, and small time car thief, in Las Vegas. He’s obsessed with Silver Surfer comic books, the rock and roll music of Jerry Lee Lewis, and Monica Poiccard (Valérie Kaprisky), a UCLA architecture undergraduate whom he knows only from a weekend fling while she visited Vegas.
Leaving Las Vegas, Lujack steals a Porsche, intending to drive to Los Angeles. As he speeds down the highway and looks through the owner's possessions, Lujack discovers a handgun in the vehicle's glovebox, which he briefly toys with. He comes upon a highway construction roadblock and evades it. Seeing his reckless driving, a Patrolman gives chase and the fleeing Lujack runs off the road and becomes stuck. When the Officer spotlights him and orders him to step away from the car, Lujack impulsively grabs the gun, and blindly shoots through the back window of the car, inadvertently mortally wounding the Patrolman. The remorseful Lujack pads the dying Officers head with his coat, and flees on foot. Arriving in Los Angeles, Lujack finds his picture splashed all over the newspaper and TV news as the "cop killer."
On the run, but unable to immediately leave LA while arranging to get paid for a previous car theft, under the alias of Jack Burns, Lujack breaks into Monica's apartment and waits for her to return home. Monica discovers him naked in her bed and initially declines his advances but later has sex with him in the shower. Lujack attempts to convince Monica to abscond to Mexico with him. However, Monica is a star architectural student with big plans and reluctant. Lujack shows up at her college and intrudes on her presentation of a project to her professors, initially exasperating her, but he continues to pursue her, showing up in various stolen cars to offer her rides. He eventually wears down her defenses and she succumbs to his charms once again, although still ambivalent to his insistence on accompanying him to Mexico.
After Lujack's photograph appears in the newspaper, he is recognized on the street right after dropping Monica off at a groundbreaking ceremony downtown. The police find Monica and question her on the street but Monica, once again under Jesse’s spell, refuses to turn him in. When the police start following her right before Lujack comes back to pick her up, she finally accepts his offer to flee to Mexico together.
On the way out of LA, Lujack and Monica stop in order for Jesse to repair his latest stolen car. Monica walks to a nearby store and finds that her picture is on the front page of the national newspaper alongside Lujack's. Realizing the impossibility of her romantic fantasy, Monica phones the police, but then returns to tell Lujack she did so. Jesse asks her if she loves him, and she says no. He laughs and says “liar”. He then runs up the road to meet an accomplice he has arranged to bring his payment for the previous car theft, who throws a gun to him as well, which Lujack refuses and allows to drop to the street. The police corner him in the road where Lujack sings "Breathless" to Monica while dancing around the gun at his feet. The film ends in a freeze-frame of Jesse scooping up the gun and turning to face the police.
