Plot

When an ambitious young lawyer takes on a big case against a powerful and ruthless executive of a large pharmaceutical company, he soon finds himself involved in a case of blackmail and corruption.

An ambitious young lawyer is approached by an ex-lover who offers him all the evidence he needs to form a legal case against her husband, a powerful, ruthless executive of a large pharmaceutical company. The lawyer starts the legal proceedings and begins an affair with the woman. The lawyer's boss and the executive settle the case without going to court. The lawyer finds the woman dead in her apartment, and it appears someone is trying to blackmail the executive. The lawyer leaves the body in the apartment, but a mysterious stranger moves the body to his house moments before the police raid. The stranger was employed by the lawyer's boss, to kill the lawyer's wife for the murder of the woman, because the lawyer's boss works for the executive. The lawyer kills the stranger, and he and his wife agree not to tell anyone about all the people they murdered.

DArthur Denning (Hopkins) is the owner of a major pharmaceutical firm. He is very controlling of his girlfriend Emily Hynes (Åkerman), and she is physically intimidated by his security guards. She is abducted, and Denning is sent photos of her bruised face. He is ordered to go to an art gallery with the ransom. When a man approaches him, Denning attacks him, only to find out later that he was the gallery owner.

Before her abduction, Hynes reaches out to her ex-boyfriend Ben Cahill (Duhamel). Over drinks, she hints at Denning's abuse and some dirt she has on him. Back at her apartment, she shows Cahill files that she has stolen from Denning's laptop that reveal his criminal behavior during drug trials. She attempts to seduce Cahill. Later, she convinces a stranger to beat her up for the photo that she sends to Denning.

Cahill uses the information from Hynes to pitch a class action lawsuit to his boss Charles Abrams (Pacino) which he then files as a class action suit against Denning. Later that evening, Cahill is stunned to find Hynes dead in her apartment. With a bottle of pills in her hand, and a lethal cocktail of drugs in her system, her death is suspicious but possibly just a suicide. Cahill decides to leave the scene without reporting it to the police and tries to cover his tracks secretly telling only his wife about it.

At a preliminary deposition to the lawsuit, Denning suddenly settles the suit for $400 million, provided that the stolen documents are returned to him. A short time later, Hynes body turns up in Cahill's home. Convinced he is being framed, he then confronts Denning who is amused at Cahill's passion, but assures him that he had nothing to do with it.

A hitman kidnaps Cahill and his wife Charlotte (Eve). Cahill manages to overpower and kill him. When he inspects the hitman's files he realizes that the villain of the piece is actually his boss. Abrams has been colluding with Denning for years, deliberately losing all the cases his clients brought against the pharmaceutical magnate. The settlement was all just an elaborate way of protecting Denning from criminal liability.

Cahill submits the hitman's files to the police who arrest Abrams. Before he can be taken into custody, Abrams grabs an officer's gun and commits suicide.

As Cahill packs for a move to a new house, he notices that some of his wife's clothing smells like Hynes' perfume. He asks her what happened between the two of them. Charlotte confesses that she confronted Hynes about her involvement with her husband. They had an argument in which Charlotte hit Hynes, causing her to fall and hit her head. Though Charlotte is a nurse, she did not help her and staged the scene for the police.