Saïd is an Arab, Hubert is black, and Vinz is a Jew, all of them young, unemployed and living in a dreary, troubled Paris suburb, largely inhabited by poor immigrant families. Each of them needs to vent the anger they feel about the police brutality that landed another friend in the hospital. The film focuses on one day in the lives of these three hoodlum friends and the result is a brutal, harrowing study of the cyclical nature of violence.