One night outside New Orleans, Louisiana, a homeless veteran named Douglas Binder is chased through a clearing with $10,000 strapped to his belt. His armed pursuers are clients of Emil Fouchon, who has organized an operation allowing wealthy businessmen to hunt humans for sport. When Binder is finally killed, Fouchon reclaims the belt and asks his companions, “It’s like a drug, isn’t it? To bring a man down.” Three weeks later, Binder’s estranged daughter, Natasha, arrives from Michigan, concerned about why her father has stopped sending her letters. When a group of street toughs harass her outside a diner, former U.S. Marine Chance Boudreaux beats up her attackers. Later, Natasha stops by the police station to file a missing persons report. Since most of the officers are on strike, Detective Carmine Miller advises Natasha to have someone better acquainted with the city help her search the missions and homeless shelters. Natasha finds Chance at the dockyard looking for work as a merchant seaman and offers to pay him $100 a day to search for her father. He refuses, but changes his mind when he discovers he owes $217 in union dues and cannot sail until he settles his debt. Natasha and Chance meet his homeless friend, former Special Forces officer Elijah Roper, who claims to have known Binder while they passed out flyers for a man named Randal Poe. Natasha asks Poe about her father’s whereabouts, rousing the suspicion of Fouchon and his henchman, Pik Van Cleaf. Angry that Poe failed to ensure Binder had no family connections before recruiting him as a hunt “volunteer,” Van Cleaf cuts off Poe’s earlobe and Fouchon warns him against making another mistake. Meanwhile, Natasha learns that her father’s body was found in a burned building. After looking at the evidence file, Chance visits the site and finds one of Binder’s military dog tags, but is arrested for crossing a police barrier. Back at the station, he shows Detective Miller that the tag was punctured with an arrow from a crossbow, indicating that Binder must have been murdered before the fire. Convinced that something is amiss, Detective Miller orders another autopsy of Binder’s remains, unaware that the city undertaker, Dr. Morton, is involved with Fouchon’s scheme. Morton panics and tells Fouchon, who shoots the doctor and decides he will set up one last game in New Orleans before relocating to a new city. Meanwhile, Poe recruits Elijah as the target for Fouchon’s newest client, Ismal Zenan. Fouchon explains that he only selects trained military veterans as the targets, to provide more of a challenge for the hunter. That night, Fouchon meets Elijah in an abandoned dockyard and offers him $10,000 if he can run to the river across town while being pursued by Zenan and his team of hunters. Zenan corners his target in a cemetery and leaves him injured, but is unable to make the kill. Grabbing a machine gun, Elijah riddles Zenan’s body with bullets and flees. Although he begs civilians in the street for help, Fouchon catches up to him and shoots him dead. After examining his friend’s body the next morning, Chance visits Poe, but discovers that Van Cleaf got there first. Jumping from his nearby hiding place, Van Cleaf shoots Detective Miller and escapes in a getaway car. Chance returns fire, injuring the driver and several henchmen. Stealing a motorbike, Chance and Natasha speed away, but soon realize the gasoline tank has sprung a leak. Chance pushes Natasha off the seat and reverses course, driving full speed on a highway overpass toward their pursuers. When the vehicles collide, Chance leaps over the crash, grabs Natasha, and jumps onto a moving train below. Fouchon aims his gun, but the train carries the fugitives safely out of his firing range. Unrelenting, he and Van Cleaf round up a team of associates and charge them each $750,000 for the opportunity to track Chance and Natasha through the bayou. As they continue on foot, Chance springs a rattlesnake on one of the hunters, which kills him with a single bite. He and Natasha take shelter at the backwoods house of his uncle, Douvee, who bandages Chance’s wounds and gives him his old shotgun. Chance continues on horseback, leaving Natasha and Douvee to hide among the trees. Anticipating Fouchon and his men, Douvee detonates dynamite, but the explosion fails to kill anyone. Fouchon allows Douvee and Natasha to escape, reminding the hunters to remain focused on finding Chance. They continue the chase by helicopter, firing until Chance falls off his horse and seeks refuge inside a Mardi Gras parade float factory. Believing that Chance has the advantage, Van Cleaf suggests they leave, but Fouchon refuses to give up. As Chance emerges from the shadows to challenge his opponents, Douvee and Natasha sneak inside and begin killing other hunters. In a faceoff against Van Cleaf, Chance shoots him dead. In retaliation, Fouchon stabs Douvee and takes Natasha hostage, forcing Chance to put down his shotgun. When Fouchon asks why he complicated his scheme by getting involved, Chance responds, “Poor people get bored too.” As they fight, Chance drops a grenade down the front of Fouchon’s pants, and it explodes. Chance and Natasha return to Douvee, who remains uninjured because Fouchon’s knife failed to penetrate the liquor flask hidden beneath his jacket.