A hedge fund trader and his girlfriend embezzle millions. They succumb to the pleasures of sex and freedom in Rio until a vicious reckoning by their sadistic boss forces them toward a scheme of revenge against him every bit as savage.             

SYNOPSIS:

Guy Charbonneau hates the high-stress life of a hedge fund trader until the day his colleague is exposed attempting to scam their employer, Kray Group. Then his sometime girlfriend Raina confronts him with the knowledge she exchanged sex for a place on the trading floor. He decides to use a hidden program to make himself fantastically rich and get out with millions along with Raina, whom he has talked into assisting the theft. Despite a watchdog security expert on the premises, they accomplish their e-theft, escape to Rio de Janeiro, and begin to live a life of sensual pleasure with an open relationship that includes other wealthy Brazilians and Europeans as sex partners.

They meet a mysterious man on the beach of Ipanema. Damio introduces them to Rio’s darker side where youth randomly fornicate and kill one another in the terrible ritualized violence of the phenomenon known as “funk balls” of the favelas [slums] behind the “marvelous city.” Despite the sexual license of their relationship, Guy and Raina discover that they do love each other. Then the man whom they defrauded arrives with paid killers to pursue them. He kidnaps Raina and their guide with the help of corrupt Brazilian police. Guy is forced to watch the torture and murder of Damio while Raina is gang-raped. He agrees to return the bulk of the stolen money through wire transfers. He pursues Raina’s captors to a small island resort northwest of Rio (the film’s opening) but fails to free her from the yacht where Kray has secured her with an armed guard. Guy awaits the chaos of Carnaval to make his move to save Raina. At the most decadent and exclusive ball in Rio at a nightclub in Leblon, he forces Kray to take him to Raina. He finds her on display, where she is being sexually abused for the pleasure of rich onlookers. They make a ragged but successful escape from Kray and the city.

Months later back home, Guy and Raina are lying low, cultivating their plot to get to Kray before he finds them. Guy has by now become a different man from the one we first met; he has become a man like Kray—he has discovered he can live for a while in the abyss that Rio opened up inside him. To effect his plan, Guy works a low-level night-shift job while Raina takes a job as a caterer. We see Guy visiting the worst slum areas of the city, seemingly handing out religious brochures, but in reality recruiting prostitutes and crack whores for his scheme against Kray. Just as he begins to draw suspicion from a young black cop suspicious of this late-night do-gooder, Guy and Raina force Kray from his office skyscraper and take him to a run-down neighborhood in East Cleveland where the grisly finale occurs. With the money left over from the theft, Guy pays prostitutes to bite the flesh from a subdued and drugged Kray. Each bloody mouthful earns the biter a large payment; the suspicious police officer finally interests two homicide detectives into checking out Guy under his false name, but by the time the cops arrive, the last fatal bites have been taken from the body of Kray. The epilogue shows Guy and Raina living in isolation, scarred and haunted by their experiences with the soulless evil of Kray and the allure of Rio’s wild side.