Next Three Days

| Lara's life turns upside down when she is arrested for killing her boss. Soon, with her life getting tougher, her husband decides to take matters into his own hands.

CAST

Late at night in the middle of town, college teacher John Brennan nervously drives his car with a dying man on the passenger seat. As he tries to decide what to do next, we get to see how it all started.

Three years ago, John has a normal life with his wife Lara and his son Luke in a lovely house in the suburbs. One morning, after she takes her routine insulin injection, Lara is surprised to find a blood stain on her jacket and takes it to the sink to wash it, but before she's done, the police suddenly storm into the house and arrest her for murder. Lara is sentenced to life in prison, and John must raise Luke on his own. But John doesn't give up, he continues to pay a lawyer to appeal her case and regularly visits Lara in prison with Luke, who doesn't pay much attention to his mother when she tries to connect with him. Three months ago, John goes over the evidence with his lawyer again. Lara swears there had been another woman she bumped into and made her lose her button, but there's not enough proof to send the cops searching for her. There is, however, a lot of evidence against Lara: a coworker saw her leaving the scene, the victim's blood is on her clothes, and her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. The lawyer points out that no matter what they believe, Lara is never getting out, so John fires him.

Afterward, he visits Lara to give her this news, and she guesses as soon as she sees his crying face, causing her to have a breakdown. Later that night, John gets a call saying Lara has been sent to the hospital. After arguing with the cop and the doctor, he's finally allowed to see her for a few minutes, and he finds her handcuffed to the bed and with a bandage around her wrist that gives him a clue of what she did. At that moment, John decides he'll do anything he can to get Lara out of jail, even if he needs to go down the illegal route.

He starts by reading books about prison breaks and arranges a meeting with former inmate Damon Pennington, who escaped from jail seven times. Damon doesn't believe John's story about this being college research, but he gives him a few tips anyway in exchange for some money: look for things that break up the prison's daily routine, have a destination already in mind that doesn't attract tourists, plan how to get there in advance, stay away from stations and airports, leave from another state, find good fake documents, and pay everything with cash - this means he'll need a decent amount of money to last him around five years. The two most difficult parts will be one, dealing with Pittsburgh's bridges because since 9/11 they have learned to lock up the city in fifteen minutes; and two, being ready to leave his parents for good and kill if necessary. As soon as John returns home, he takes over a wall to begin sketching his plan with a map, pictures, clues, and calculations. Whenever he visits Lara in jail, he pays attention to details like the elevator having a keyhole, workers coming over to fix a leak on the ceiling, and which trucks stop by every day. John grows so desperate that he even looks at all this information on his laptop while teaching his classes, and puts his house on sale to get the money needed for their future. In order to get the fake papers, John begins going to a shady neighborhood to buy OxyContin and asks the dealers for any contacts that know how to do good passports. It takes him a few tries until he finds a guy that tells him to go to a bar to find the right man, and John accidentally falls into a trap where they told him to go there to get mugged. All this is watched by Mike, a strange guy sitting at the bar.

He returns to the shady neighborhood a few days later and this time, he's followed by two bikes. When he gets home, he hears the doorbell ring and finds Mike there, offering him his services. John gives him some photographs and some money in advance before asking Mike not to return to his house ever again - he'll do the pick up at another location. Mike agrees and reminds John that if he doesn't arrive on time, John should flee. His next step is buying a gun and asking the seller how to use it. When Wednesday comes, he goes to the agreed location to meet with Mike, and stays waiting there even after noticing the time is late. After a car parking nearby leaves, Mike finally shows up and scolds John for staying so long since that car that left had been a cop. He gives John the papers and tells him he wants this too much, and such desperation will cause him to make a mistake. John's next action is to learn how to make a bump key, which is a key that can open any door. After following an internet tutorial, he decides to try it out the next time he goes to visit Lara. Before passing through the metal detector, he throws the bump key with his regular ones in the bowl, and after the detector declares him clean, he grabs the bowl himself to hide the key in his hand before the cop can check it out. As the line of visitors is guided through the hallway, John makes sure to stay last as he approaches the elevator and inserts the key. Unfortunately, the key breaks and half of it gets stuck in the hole, so John has to throw away the half in his hand while he plays innocent and waits for the inevitable: a cop coming to the elevator and finding it. When this happens, all visitors are interrogated one by one, and the officer quickly gets suspicious of John when he points at the security camera image and says he's behind everyone, the shot just didn't catch his face. Suspicion isn't proof though, so John is allowed to leave, and as soon as he steps out of the building, he throws up.

Detective Quinnan sees this and becomes suspicious as well. Unaware that uinnan is keeping an eye on him, John begins selling his furniture and ignoring his brother whenever he comes by to check on him. One afternoon, when he takes Luke to the park, they receive an invitation to go to his friend Carrie's birthday party, which will be thrown in a few days. Later, John goes back to his investigation, and when he notices a new vehicle stopping by the prison, he finally finds the key to executing his plan: the medical vans. John researches Lara's kind of diabetes, follows the van around to study its schedule, and learns how to unlock a car with a tennis ball from the internet. The next day, he follows the ball method to break into the medical van and take a picture of his wife's tests, which later he edits on the computer to make it look like she is sicker than she actually is. The next time she visits Lara, she has terrible news: in three days she'll be transferred to a high-security facility. Now John must modify his entire plan to make it fit in such a short amount of time.

The main issue is the money, since he hasn't sold the house yet, so he grabs his gun and drives to a bank, intending to rob it. But in the end, he can't bring himself to do it. Afterward, he visits Lara again to tell her he's trying to appeal against her transfer and admits he hasn't been spending much time with Luke. Lara is angry because John doesn't want to accept reality and continues to live in some dream where there's still hope for her, so to make him give up, she tells him she did kill her coworker before leaving the room. But John still doesn't believe her, so he asks to see her again and swears he'll get her out. Determined to get the money he needs, when night falls, John goes back to the shady neighborhood and follows one of the dealers to the house of his provider Alex. As soon as he sees an opening, John grabs the dealer and pushes him inside, causing the guard dog to bite his leg. John threatens everyone with his gun and makes Alex lock the dog and his partner away before asking them for the money, but the men only give him what they have in their pockets. Alex thinks John doesn't have the guts to kill since he wasn't able to even shoot the dog, so John proves he's serious by starting a fire with a bottle of whisky.

Claiming he has a kid in the house, Alex runs upstairs, John follows him using the dealer as a shield, which turns out to be a good idea because Alex actually has come up to grab his own gun. The dealer takes the bullet for John and when Alex comes for him next, John manages to shoot him first. Afterward, John searches the rooms and finds a bag full of money, but on his way out, he finds the dealer is still alive and asking for help. Now we go back to the beginning, with John having the bleeding dealer in his car, which has lost a taillight. He considers taking him to a hospital, but before he can make up his mind, the dealer dies. John gets rid of him by leaving his body at a bus stop, then goes to a particular parking lot to make a cut on the fence. Alex's house burns down and the police come to investigate, finding blood on the floor and the pieces of the broken taillight as clues. Meanwhile, John spends the night at his parent's place, so when his father goes to put his bag away, he finds the plane tickets and guesses what John is planning to do. The next morning, John makes sure Luke gives his grandparents a good hug since it'll be the last one, and John's father gives him a hug as well, wishing him a heartful goodbye. Today John is finally ready to execute his plan. After packing up and throwing away all the paperwork related to his planning in two separate trash bags, he stops by the med center and cuts all their phone lines.

Then he breaks into the van and replaces Lara's blood tests with the ones he falsified before dropping Luke at Carrie's birthday party. Before leaving, he tells the girl's mother that Luke has his grandparents' number in his jacket in case John runs late. At the hospital, they see the fake blood results and since they can't call the lab to double-check, the doctor requests Lara to be transferred so she can be kept under observation. Meanwhile, the cops use the broken taillight to get the car model and track it back to John, so they go check out his house and find the weird state of what used to be his planning wall. When they get a call from the station saying Lara is being transferred to the hospital, the detectives ask for escorts and rush to the hospital too, guessing John's intentions. But John arrives at the hospital before them and gets into Lara's room by wearing a coat and pretending to be a doctor. Threatening the cops with his gun, he gets them to uncuff Lara before tying them up, but Lara refuses to leave with him. So in order to make her change her mind, John offers his phone so that she can call Luke and tell him neither of his parents is coming back. Seeing as she has no other choice, Lara accepts to escape and changes into the clothes John has brought for her, then the two of them get into an elevator right as a nurse sees them leave the room and begins calling for security. John and Lara ditch their white coats and reach the lobby, but the detectives are there waiting for them, so John presses another button to go to another floor. When they get there though, instead of getting out, John drops their coats near the stairs before getting into the elevator again. Now the cops think they took the stairs to the parking lot and run there, but the couple actually has gone back to the lobby, leaving through the front door. Once they reach the streets, John turns over his jacket so they can join a group of Pittsburgh Penguins fans that are heading towards the station. They manage to get on the subway before the detectives catch up with them, but because John knows cops will be waiting for them at the next station, he suddenly pulls the emergency brake. He and Lara get off the train, which has stopped right beside the parking lot John visited the other night.

They sneak in through the hole he cut on the fence and get in the car John had already stashed there. They manage to cross the first bridge in time, so the next step is to pick up Luke. Unfortunately, there's a little detail John missed and only finds out when he stops at Carrie's house: the party is at the zoo, and they haven't come back yet. While the cops investigate John's neighborhood and find the trash bag with his plan papers, John drives to the zoo, only to change roads at the last minute. He doesn't think they can pick him up in time before they close off the roads, so they could leave Luke to be picked up by his grandparents and come for him in the future. Lara hates the idea and opens the car door to expose her head to the road, refusing to live without her child. After almost crashing against a truck, John stops the car and reconnects with Lara, accepting to go for their son after all. They drive to the zoo and after picking Luke up, they need to find a way to cross the checkpoint without being found.

Thankfully, John gets an idea: he stops by the train station and picks up an elderly couple to offer them a ride. Guards at the checkpoint are only searching for a young couple with a kid for now, so they manage to cross safely. After dropping the elders in town, they go to a Canadian airport and pass through passport control right before their pictures appear on the wanted list, and thanks to a change of shifts, the new guard doesn't know they're inside. The cops put together the paper pieces they found in John's trash and find a picture of Haiti, so they send a team to stop all flights to that country, to no avail. Quinnan realizes then that they only found half of the plan because this bag was left behind by John on purpose with a fake clue to delay them. Meanwhile, the family safely boards a plane to Venezuela. A few days later, John and Lara are happily living in Caracas with Luke.

Detective Quinnan returns to the scene of the crime with a new theory - the night of the murder, it had been raining, and nobody took that into account. Lara had said that she found the murder weapon, which was a fire extinguisher, on the floor and moved it so it wasn't on the way, and that was how she got blood on her jacket. She never saw the body, but on her way out, she bumped into the killer and lost a jacket button that was never found to be used as evidence. But if that day rained, the water would have dragged the button down the drain.