Plot
Attorney, Claire Kubik (Ashley Judd), and her woodworker husband, Tom (James Caviezel), find their idyllic life in Marin County shattered when, during a Christmas shopping excursion in San Francisco's Union Square, he is captured by the FBI and charged with the murder of nine peasants in a remote village in El Salvador in 1988. Claire is shocked to discover Tom, whose real name is Ronald Chapman, was a covert military operative serving in the United States Marine Corps and has been on the run for the past fourteen years.
Tom admits he was present at the scene of the mass murders but staunchly denies being involved in the killings. He insists he has been made a scapegoat in order to conceal the identity of the real culprit, Major James Hernandez (Juan Carlos Hernández), now the aide of Brigadier General Bill Marks (Bruce Davison).
First Lieutenant Terence Embry (Adam Scott) is assigned to defend Tom, but his youth and lack of experience prompt Claire to decide to defend her husband as well. When she realizes she needs help from someone familiar with the workings of a military court, she hires Charlie Grimes (Morgan Freeman), an embittered former military attorney who has a grudge against the military brass, to assist her. Five key eyewitnesses, who previously testified Tom was guilty, have died under seemingly mysterious circumstances, raising Claire and Charlie's suspicions. As the trial proceeds, they uncover a massive cover-up perpetrated by one of the military's highest ranking officials. Also creating problems are the sudden appearance of a resident of the village where the mass murder took place, who insists Tom was responsible; Embry's romantic involvement with Claire's irresponsible sister Jackie (Amanda Peet), which leads Claire to believe he may be leaking details about secrets she has uncovered to the prosecution; and Charlie's falling off the wagon after more than a year of sobriety.
Claire blackmails a general by threatening to reveal what she knows about the coverup and asks him to make the case go away. The Department of Defense has the case thrown out of court due to "security reasons". Just as Claire is about to celebrate her victory in court, Charlie discovers the truth, while in Mexico, that Tom had murdered one of the witnesses, indicating that he was the killer after all. After hearing Claire talk to Charlie on the phone, a short scuffle between Claire and Tom ensues. The Salvadorian witness to the massacre shoots Tom through the window. The film ends with Charlie and Claire starting a new partnership-based law firm.
Read more about this topic: High Crimes
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“There saw I how the secret felon wrought,
And treason labouring in the traitor’s thought,
And midwife Time the ripened plot to murder brought.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)