Wallace Avery (Colin Firth) is tired of being a loser. Once a hot shot in the world of competitive amateur golf, Wallace failed miserably when he turned pro. Ten years after retiring from the pro tour, he's lost his job at FedEx. His ex-wife openly pities him. And his thirteen-year-old son hates him.

Unable to face his life of quiet desperation any longer, Wallace stages his own death and buys himself a new identity as Arthur Newman. His road trip towards a new life is derailed by the entrance of a beautiful loose cannon, Mike Fitzgerald (Emily Blunt), who's running from her own past.

Driving cross country, this mismatched pair of damaged souls begins to connect as they break into empty homes and take on the identities of the absent owners: elderly Southern newlyweds, preening hipsters, a golf champ and his Russian wife, among others.

An offbeat love story set in a perfect storm of identity crisis, 'Arthur Newman' looks at how two people try to remake themselves and come around to owning up to some basic truths about the identities they left at home.