Synopsis
In 1990, a young girl climbs into a red Mercedes with her parents. As she peers directly at us, her father starts the car and – -- BOOM! – The car explodes, engulfing the entire parking lot in flames. Flash forward to present day. We meet PAUL BRENNAN (Jason Patric), a mechanic who owns his own small garage. Paul’s a hard working guy, a widower and father of two. Precocious Adam, 8, looks up to Paul and thinks he’s the best dad in the world. Paul’s daughter, Beth, attends college all the way across the country. He’s a religious man, raising his kids to say their prayers and to do well in school. Late one night, he learns that Beth’s tuition has not been paid. He calls the bank and is told that the check he sent her cleared weeks earlier. Fearing the worst, he hires a sitter for Adam and flies immediately to her. He hits the streets to track her down and finds her best friend, Angela. She tells Paul that Beth recently went to New Orleans with her boyfriend Eddie. Devastated, Paul asks Angela to take him to New Orleans, the last place in the world he wants to go. Angela suggests he calls the cops, but he refuses. Once in New Orleans, Angela has trouble finding Eddie, but identifies one of his buddies, Raffi. Paul approaches Raffi and his three friends and asks if they’ve seen Eddie. They blow him off, but he won’t back down, and they attack him. Big mistake. As Angela watches in shock, Paul takes out all four men. It’s as though he can’t feel pain. They track down Eddie and head to a bar called Barney’s to meet him. Barney’s is a gangster bar, a place Paul seems to know all too well. Paul confronts Eddie, who informs him that Beth is a drug-crazed slut. A gangster named Riley (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) tells Eddie to shut up and offers Paul a drink. Riley knows Paul, knows what a tough guy he used to be. Scared, Eddie fesses up and says that Beth is probably with a crazy drug dealer named THE PHARMACY. As Paul leaves the bar, one of the thugs makes a phone call to a gangster named OMAR (Bruce Willis). Enraged, Omar orders his men to bring Paul to him. We learn that Paul is responsible for blowing up the car in 1993, and that Omar was permanently scarred in the explosion. His daughter, the little girl, was killed. Paul enlists the help of his friend SAM (John Cusack) to hide Beth, but Omar’s men find him and a horrific gun battle ensues. Paul kills Omar and rescues Beth, but is shot several times in the process and appears to be dead. But later at the hospital, an astonished doctor tells Beth he’s going to live. “Your father must be protected from way up on high by someone,” he says.