Plot

Two fledgling criminals kidnap a pizza delivery guy, strap a bomb to his chest, and inform him that he has mere hours to rob a bank or else...

The not so smart Dwayne intends to open a massage parlor with his partner Travis, but he does not have money for the investment. He decides to hire a hit-man to kill his father, The Major, who won a large amount of money in the lottery years ago, but the killer demands US$ 100,000 for the job. Dwayne and Travis kidnap the pizza delivery boy Nick and they dress Nick in a vest with a timer and several bombs. Then Dwayne tells Nick that he has ten hours to rob US$ 100,000 from a bank. Once he does, he would give Nick the code to release the vest. Nick summons his best friend Chet to help him in the heist but the scheme does not work the way Dwayne has plotted.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a slack, marijuana-fueled pizza delivery driver who has trouble completing the "30 Minutes Or Less" policy that his employer issues, leading to a reprimand from his boss Chris (Brett Gelman). Nick's schoolteacher friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) discovers that Nick has slept with and still has feelings for Chet's twin sister Kate (Dilshad Vadsaria). It is also revealed that Chet was the reason Nick's parents divorced, because he told Nick's father that his wife had been cheating on him with a lifeguard. After a heated argument, the two end their friendship.

Meanwhile, two older delinquents named Dwayne King (Danny McBride) and his friend Travis Cord (Nick Swardson) are miserable living under the shadow of Dwayne's domineering father the Major (Fred Ward), incidentally a multi-million-dollar state lottery winner. Dwayne confides in lap-dancer Juicy (Bianca Kajlich) about his contempt for his father, who is squandering Dwayne's presumed inheritance while nowhere near dying anytime soon. Juicy tells him she knows a hit-man who will kill Dwayne's dad for $100,000, so that Dwayne can receive the inheritance 'sooner'. At Travis's suggestion, he and Dwayne devise a plot to kidnap a complete stranger and strap a remote-controlled bomb to his chest, to compel him to rob a bank for them for the hit money Dwayne needs. After seeing an advertisement for the pizzeria that Nick works at, they order a pizza and wait for a driver to come to their hideout. When Nick arrives, Dwayne and Travis (who are wearing a gorilla and monkey mask) assault him and Travis chloroform's Nick.

When Nick wakes up, he finds a vest rigged with explosives strapped and buckled onto his torso, with both a timer and a cellular phone-activated trigger. Disguised, Dwayne and Travis tell him his situation: if he does not rob a bank within 10 hours, the bomb will detonate. For effect, Dwayne demonstrates another bomb blowing up a stuffed Teddy bear. Dwayne states that if Nick dares going to the police, they will remotely detonate the bomb, as they will be monitoring him. They leave Nick their number to call them and send a frantic Nick on his way. In his panic, Nick goes to a school where Chet is working and desperately pleads with him to help. After plans to deactivate or remove the bomb are dashed, Chet says he has no choice but to rob the bank. Still uneasy, Nick asks Chet to assist him. Chet reluctantly agrees.

After purchasing toy guns, spray paint, energy drinks and ski masks for the robbery, Nick suggests stealing Chet's family friend's Datsun 280ZX so that the police will be unable to track the license plate number of Nick's Mustang. Nick then stops by his workplace to tell off his boss and quit, then goes to see Kate and say some cryptic 'final' words to her. Nick and Chet go to the bank, hold it up and obtain money upon forcing a bank employee named Sandra (Rebecca Cox) to empty the vault. The bag of money, rigged with a dye pack, accidentally explodes inside the bank, and Chet forces Sandra to get another bag of money. Meanwhile, the bank manager has pulled the alarm, forcing Nick and Chet to flee quickly as Dwayne and Travis, outside, watch the commotion. A police officer arrives, but when Nick shows him the bomb vest, he runs away.

More police arrive, and after a car chase that ends up with Nick and Chet crashing the 280ZX, the two successfully evade capture by sneaking onto a city bus. Nick calls Dwayne and tells him he has the money. Dwayne says he and Travis will meet him at an abandoned rail-yard to make the exchange. Dwayne and Travis go to a restaurant instead as Dwayne calls up Juicy to get her hit-man ally and to head to the rail-yard. When Dwayne asks Travis to be the one to detonate the bomb if the time comes, Travis starts to become unsettled.

After getting his Mustang, Nick waits for Dwayne and Travis at the rail-yard while Chet hides nearby to avoid disclosing his involvement in the scheme. Instead of Dwayne and Travis however, Juicy and the hit-man Chango (Michael Peña) are the ones who arrive to pick up the money. Nick hands Chango the money and expects Chango to give him the code which will deactivate the bomb. Chango claims he doesn't know what the code is. When Nick keeps asking him for the code, Chango gets aggravated and holds Nick at gunpoint. Chet runs in and beat down Chango with a metal bar while Nick incapacitates Juicy. The two grab the money and escape.

As Travis is giving Dwayne a haircut, Dwayne ends up getting a call from Nick who berates Dwayne for not giving Chango the code to the bomb and dares him to detonate the bomb with the money at his side. Pulling over near an abandoned factory, Nick tells Chet that this is a tactic for when the third call is made to them, the details to leave the money and the codes will be made. Overly frustrated by the turn of events and when Nick doesn't answer the phone again, Dwayne activates the speed dial number on his phone for the bomb to explode but finds that Travis altered the numbers while Dwayne wasn't looking because he was getting nervous about Dwayne's gradually violent attitude. When Dwayne thinks that Nick is calling him, it is instead Chango who informs him about what had happened during the exchange. When Dwayne comments that he is a pawn in his plan with Travis shaking his head not to go into further details, Chango states that the deal is off and that he'll be coming after Dwayne next.

Rethinking their plan, the two head to Kate's apartment in their masks and kidnap her while she was in the restroom. Meanwhile, Chango breaks into the Major's house to find information regarding Dwayne's location and finds a hand-drawn map to the scrapyard. While there, the Major attacks him with a pen gun as Chango asks why he is protecting Dwayne if he is the one that called the hit. The Major is then shot in the stomach by Chango after a struggle. Upon applying some peroxide, Chango uses the information he found in Dwayne's room to head to the scrapyard. After Chet's next attempts to remove the bomb vest, Dwayne calls Nick to let him know that he has Kate and if he doesn't meet at the scrapyard to give him the money, he will kill her.

Nick arrives at the scrapyard and exchanges the money for Kate. Dwayne gives Nick the code (which is Dwayne's favorite sexual position: 69 69 69) to deactivate and unbuckle the bomb with just minutes to spare. Dwayne then tells Nick to walk away, but Nick deduces that as soon as Nick and Kate turn around, they will be shot, and their bodies will be burned. Dwayne agrees by having them at gunpoint, but Nick has Chet fake having a sniper on them by pointing with his laser pointer. Dwayne and Travis believe him and drop their weapons and leave with the money.

However, Nick is brutally knocked out by Chango who now has Dwayne at gunpoint, demanding for the money. Dwayne gives him the money, but Chango decides to still kill him. Travis, who has a flamethrower, torches Chango. While being burned and on the ground, Chango successfully shoots Dwayne in the shoulder and shoots the gas tank on Travis's back, and it explodes. Nick wakes up and takes the money and leaves with Kate and Chet. Chango dies in the fire and Dwayne saves Travis from dying by beating the fire of the exploded gas tank with his shirt. Dwayne gets in his van to go kill Nick and steal the money. He chases them down and has Nick at gunpoint just as his van explodes, seemingly killing him. Nick reveals he reactivated the bomb and put it in Dwayne's van. Afterwards the trio talk about what they'll do with their money, but it squirts blue dye and out of anger Chet screams "Sandra!".

In a post-credits scene, Dwayne (who survived the bomb explosion), Travis, the Major (who is recuperating in a wheelchair), and Juicy are seen in an advertisement for their new family business called "Major Tan: Tanning Salon."