Dog Eat Dog is the tale of three unremorseful criminals with two felony convictions apiece and no more chances. Under California's `Three Strikes' law, one more conviction - even for shoplifting - carries a mandatory life sentence with no prospect of remission. But a law intended to deter career criminals has the opposite effect on these three. Combined they have spent a lifetime behind bars and have no idea, or intention, of leading a straight life under rules set by a system they have never belonged to.
Troy, the gang's leader and the brains of the operation, is an unrepentant thief who is `irrevocably committed to being the criminal outsider. He had nothing vested in society. It had turned him out and expected him to be satisfied as a menial worker as the price for staying out of prison. Real freedom has choices attached; without money there is none'. And with that in mind, Troy and his partners, Diesel Carson and the truly rabid Mad Dog McCain, set about planning a last big heist which will set them up for life. But even a perfectly planned and flawlessly executed robbery is not enough to prevent a denouement which has a grim inevitability about it.