John Boyz lives close to where they film "Baywatch", but you'd never know it. His life is full of bizarre friends, sweaty sex, pistol wielding gangsters, bungling bureaucrats, police fanatics, revolutionaries, and weirdos. All John wants is a little peace of mind and a little piece of the action, but in "Floundering" it wont come easy.

A fearsome 19th century bandit, Cobra Verde cuts a swath through Brazil until he arrives at the sugar plantation of Don Octávio Countinho. Not knowing that his new guest is the notorious bandit and impressed by his ruthless ways, Don Octávio hires Cobra Verde to oversee his slaves. But when Cobra Verde impregnates Don Octávio’s three daughters, the incensed plantation owner exiles the outlaw to Africa where he is expected to reopen the slave trade. Following his trans-Atlantic journey, Cobra Verde exploits tribal conflicts to commandeer an abandoned fortress and whips an army of naked warriors into a frenzied bloodlust as he vies for survival.

It begins with the tragedy of Armero, during the course investigates the murder of a beautiful woman and on his way some people die in the end a killing and a cemetery. Emerson Roque Fierro, former policeman and private investigator shadowing, investigates the murder of "Golondrina", a beautiful young woman, occurred in a seedy hotel in downtown Bogota. Without knowing who it is, begins to understand their relationships with a motley gallery of men: a corrupt politician, connected to drug trafficking and paramilitary groups, a bullfighter cunning and good for nothing, a boxer fallen on hard times with a force so stupid as rare Lotero intellect and an insightful blind. And in the midst of this, the dark threads entangling power to everyone, and especially the poor Fierro.

A group of tenants facing eviction due to a city renovation unite to fight back, but as they clash with the landlord and his ruthless attorney, they each transform into the opposite of who they once were.