1920s Los Angeles. A little girl called Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is in hospital with a broken arm when the man in the bed adjacent to hers, injured Hollywood stuntman Roy Walker (Lee Pace), befriends her and begins to tell her a series of vivid, fantastical tales.
The stories centre around five heroes – an Indian, an ex-slave named Ota Benga, an Italian explosives expert, a masked bandit, and Charles Darwin – all of whom unite to fight a common enemy, Governor Odious.
As time goes by, fiction and reality start to intertwine, and the hospital staff begin to appear as characters in Roy’s stories.