The action in the film takes place in the American South during Prohibition and the Great Depression. The Bondurant family, three brothers, Jack, Forrest and Howard, are engaged in prohibited business - bootlegging. An optimistic Jack, the youngest of the brothers, hopes to earn money and impress his girlfriend Bertha through bootlegging. At the same time, Forrest, by contrast, is very gloom, taciturn and suspicious, and Howard also often has to deal with the enemies of the illegal family business, on behalf of which corrupt local police act.