由于酗酒,弗兰克(本·金斯利 Ben Kingsley 饰)又一次将组织分配给他的任务给搞砸了,作为一名职业杀手,这是无法原谅的错误,为了让弗兰克“重回正道”,他的叔叔罗曼(菲利浦·贝克·霍尔 Philip Baker Hall 饰)不得不将他送往旧金山,进行强制戒酒。
在好友汤姆(卢克·威尔逊 Luke Wilson 饰)的陪伴下,弗兰克的戒酒事业初显成效,同时,一个叫劳瑞尔(蒂娅·里欧妮 Tea Leoni 饰)的姑娘的出现让弗兰克坠入了情网。坏消息传来,黑帮大佬爱德华(丹尼斯·法里纳 Dennis Farina 饰)对弗兰克的家族进行了大清洗,为了复仇,弗兰克毅然放弃了旧金山平静舒适的生活,踏上了返乡的道路。不同的是,这一次,弗兰克的身边多了一个美人,对于危险的未来,深爱弗兰克的劳瑞尔决定不离不弃,奉陪到底。
Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”