July 22, 1934 - outside Chicago's Biograph Theater, a barrage of FBI bullets brings down John Dillinger. As the body of Public Enemy Number one crumbles to the ground, one of the strangest, most riveting stories in the history of crime begins to unfold. It seems that J. Edgar Hoover's boys have unknowingly blown away the wrong Dillinger -- not John, but his brother. While G-Men are grabbing the headlines, the real Dillinger slips away to go straight with a new life. But "Scarface" Al Capone knows all about Dillinger and his secret new identity, and confronts him. He wants Dillinger to pull one more heist, a bank where Capone has millions stashed away. And he's got an offer Dillinger can't refuse. So now, five years after his death, with Chicago's most infamous mobster holding his wife and son for insurance, John Dillinger has to pull off the biggest bank job of all time.

This film integrates two popular "conspiracy theories" of gangster folklore: that John Dillinger didn't really die at the Biograph (for years, no one bought the idea that the FBI had killed him because the face was different and the man weighed more but this was easily explained by Dillinger having plastic surgery and just natural weight gain) and that Al Capone had hidden away a fortune somewhere in Chicago. (Geraldo Rivera did an expose in which he did in fact find the vault...but it was empty)

Anachronisms: The story is set in 1940. However, one character quotes White Heat (1949).