四位驻伊美军士兵接到了回国的调令,然而,一次恐怖性炸弹袭击,改变了他们的命运。军用卡车司机凡妮莎(杰西卡•贝尔 Jessica Biel 饰)被炸成重伤,军医威尔(塞缪尔•杰克逊 Samuel L. Jackson 饰)负责救治,结果不幸截肢。贾马尔(50美分 50 Cent 饰)误杀了伊拉克妇女,从此存下心结。汤米(布莱恩•普莱斯列 Brian Presley 饰)亲眼目睹了战友阵亡,悲痛欲绝。四个人回国后,凡妮莎在校园做体育老师,但是配搭的假肢让她黯然神伤。威尔的妻子发现丈夫的情绪总是失控,而叛逆的儿子也经常顶撞父亲;贾马尔和汤米同时进行了心理诊疗小组,但是两人发生争执,分道扬镳,没想到再次见面却是生死一线……
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.”