Based on the true story of Homer Hickam, a coal miner's son who was inspired by the first Sputnik launch to take up rocketry against his father's wishes, and eventually became a NASA scientist.
The four Newton brothers are a poor farmer family in the 1920s. One day, the oldest of them, Willis, realizes that there's no future in the fields and offers his brothers to become bank robbers. Soon the family agrees. They become very famous robbers and execute the greatest train robbery in American history five years later.
After inexplicably surving a plane crash, TV station worker Denise tries to get on with her life. After she learns that she was actually supposed to die in the crash, the unseen specter of death starts sending its minions, people that have recently died, to collect her.