Synopsis
MALONE (Thomas Jane) is a legendary hired gun. Some say gangsters murdered his family, and tried to kill him, but he was too tough to die. Other stories are worse…much worse, but only he knows the truth. His mythic reputation precedes him, inspiring awe in even the worst criminals. His agent of sorts, MURPH, has sent him to retrieve a briefcase from a grungy hotel. A simple job, right? Wrong. Malone enters the hotel to find an army of thugs and hitmen waiting for him. He tears into them and finds his way to the case. Angry at being sent into a shootout, he pries open the case to see it’s contents – and is shocked at what he finds. After going to the nursing home where his mom GLORIA patches him up, Malone returns to Murph and demands to know who hired him, but Murph won’t say. Murph in turn demands to know what’s in the case that’s so valuable. “The meaning of love,” Malone says cryptically. Murph finally reveals, after much persuasion, who hired him. It’s EVELYN (Elsa Pataky), a young bombshell, whose brother Sammy is being held pending the delivery of the case to WHITMORE, the city’s most ruthless and reclusive crime lord.
Whitmore gathers his best soldiers, including the hulking brute BOULDER (Ving Rhames) and the knife-wielding MAULER and tells them to go after the case. He has no idea what’s inside, claims he didn’t hire Malone, but he has a hunch it contains work visas for a group of immigrant girls he wants to use as hookers in his various sex clubs. They call in MATCHSTICK, a psychotic pyromaniac, to help them, and set out to find Malone.
Malone accompanies Evelyn to the drop-off, an abandoned amusement park, where she finds her brother Sammy tied up on the merry-go-round. Mauler appears out of nowhere and launches a knife into Sammy’s chest. He utters his dying words to Malone, “sister,” and a spectacular shoot-out and chase ensues. Malone figures Evelyn’s more trouble than she’s worth, and dumps her on the side of the road, but not before finding out everything she knows about the case. She says she got a letter from Eddie the Cheese, an acne faced thug. Evelyn heads to Murph’s place, and Malone finds Eddie the Cheese, hoping to extract crucial information.
Boulder and Matchstick arrive and kill Murph. Evelyn gets away and finds Malone, and the two of them continue their journey towards a showdown with Whitmore. Everywhere they go, Whitmore’s thugs are right behind them, ruthlessly tracking them. Bullets, fists, and knives fly as Malone wrestles with the meaning of Sammy’s dying words and struggles to protect the contents of the case. Finally, he handcuffs Evelyn to the radiator in his apartment for her own protection, and heads for a showdown with Whitmore at the Carnival. But it’s a trap, and Malone finds himself captured and at the mercy of Matchstick and the Mauler. When he escapes, he finds that Whitmore has taken Evelyn, and he teams up with an unlikely ally to head to Whitmore’s penthouse and rescue her.