Annie Sagan is a widow and a single mom. She landed a dream job as a prosecutor who comes to discover that her colleagues are worse criminals than the people she is trying to prosecute.
Early in the film, Annie goes out for a drink with the sleazy attorney Doug Larson. Larson is her adversary in the current trial of an unsavory defendant, and he promises to give Annie information vital to the case. Instead, his goal is to seduce her. At the Scratch bar, Larson gives Annie a roofie and takes her to his home where she passes out. During the night an intruder breaks into the house and murders Larson.
After Annie refuses to disclose her whereabouts that evening to the authorities, she realizes that she is guilty of "appearances of impropriety" and may be disbarred. The race is now on for Annie to discover the identity of the killer of Larson and to clear her name. She works with a lazy police investigator named Mark Evans. Apparently, Annie and Mark were once romantically inclined. But now, she will come to know his true colors, and it is not a pretty picture.
The screenplay was cleverly devised around the conceit that Annie was a better attorney than Doug Larson, who was a shyster and blackmailer. She was also a better investigator than Mark Evans, who was a pathological liar and a murderer. And she has the potential to be a better jurist than Judge Miller, who fixed cases and paid hush money to his blackmailer. The plot unfolded around clues from Larson's code used to keep secret the names of those he was blackmailing. The code was in the form of initials (or acronyms) for famous authors, such as George Eliot and Stephen King.
The film's heartfelt denouement demonstrated that Annie was a great mom, who strove to become something that is becoming more and more rare in our world today: a role model.
Early in the film, Annie goes out for a drink with the sleazy attorney Doug Larson. Larson is her adversary in the current trial of an unsavory defendant, and he promises to give Annie information vital to the case. Instead, his goal is to seduce her. At the Scratch bar, Larson gives Annie a roofie and takes her to his home where she passes out. During the night an intruder breaks into the house and murders Larson.
After Annie refuses to disclose her whereabouts that evening to the authorities, she realizes that she is guilty of "appearances of impropriety" and may be disbarred. The race is now on for Annie to discover the identity of the killer of Larson and to clear her name. She works with a lazy police investigator named Mark Evans. Apparently, Annie and Mark were once romantically inclined. But now, she will come to know his true colors, and it is not a pretty picture.
The screenplay was cleverly devised around the conceit that Annie was a better attorney than Doug Larson, who was a shyster and blackmailer. She was also a better investigator than Mark Evans, who was a pathological liar and a murderer. And she has the potential to be a better jurist than Judge Miller, who fixed cases and paid hush money to his blackmailer. The plot unfolded around clues from Larson's code used to keep secret the names of those he was blackmailing. The code was in the form of initials (or acronyms) for famous authors, such as George Eliot and Stephen King.
The film's heartfelt denouement demonstrated that Annie was a great mom, who strove to become something that is becoming more and more rare in our world today: a role model.