Plot
Thanks to falsified dental records supplied by his former neighbor Nicholas "Oz" Ozeransky (Matthew Perry), retired hitman Jimmy "The Tulip" Tudeski (Bruce Willis) now spends his days compulsively cleaning his house and perfecting his culinary skills with his wife, Jill (Amanda Peet), a purported assassin who has yet to pull off a "clean" hit (everyone she is hired to kill dies in bizarre accidents before she can kill them). Oz, meanwhile, is now married to Jimmy's ex-wife Cynthia (Natasha Henstridge) and has a dental practice in California, now expecting their first child, but the relationship is complicated due to Oz's over-excessive paranoia about security, as well as Cynthia's secret continued contact with Jimmy (Although Oz also talks with Jill on occasion).
Their lives are further complicated by the return of Lazlo Gogolak (Kevin Pollak), a father figure of Jimmy's who ran the mob that Jimmy was once a member of, Jimmy and Jill having killed his son, Janni, while Lazlo was in prison. Having deduced that Jimmy is still alive, Lazlo abducts Cynthia and threatens Oz to try and learn Jimmy's location, Oz only just managing to escape thanks to one of Lazlo's henchmen accidentally shooting out a light. With no other options, Oz contacts Jimmy and Jill for assistance, but Jimmy initially refuses to help until Lazlo's men attack the house after following Oz's car.
Having captured Lazlo's remaining son, Strabonitz (Strabo, for short), Jimmy tells Lazlo that he will trade Cynthia for Strabo, but the group's attempt to check into a hotel results in Oz unintentionally triggering further conflict between Jimmy and Jill when he reveals that Jimmy still wears a crucifix Cynthia gave him. Retreating to a bar to get drunk, Jimmy becomes increasingly depressed about his apparent failure to father a child with Jill, although Oz becomes frustrated when Jimmy starts discussing his and Cynthia's old sex life, culminating in them becoming so drunk that Oz and Jimmy wake up in the same bed (Although nothing happens).
Increasingly frustrated at her poor sex life with Jimmy, Jill attempts to seduce Oz, resulting in Jimmy walking in on them and knocking Oz out, subsequently regaining his passion for Jill and his work as the two proceed to have sex in the bathroom. While re-arming themselves at Oz's house, the three are attacked by an unknown marksman, whose attempts to shoot them result in Strabo being killed in the crossfire, the subsequent argument causing Jill to leave in frustration at Jimmy's insults of her capabilities and his cold dismissal of Oz. Increasingly driven to breaking point by recent events, Oz retreats to his practice, where Jimmy greets him to apologize for recent events, only for Oz's new receptionist Julie to chloroform Oz and Jimmy, revealing that she is the sister of 'Frankie Figgs', out for revenge for Oz and Jimmy's role in her brother's death.
Waking up with Cynthia and Jimmy in Lazlo's apartment, Oz is shocked to learn that the current situation has been part of a plan by Jimmy and Cynthia from the beginning so that Cynthia could find Lazlo's half of the first dollar he ever stole, which he had torn in half to be divided between Jimmy and Yanni when they were kids. Just as Lazlo is preparing to kill the three of them, Jill shows up, having set up Strabo's body so that he appears to be alive and tied up in her car, threatening to detonate explosives in her car unless Lazlo releases Oz and Cynthia. Claiming to want to join Lazlo's organization, Jill is ordered to shoot Jimmy, finally apparently shooting Jimmy in the heart when he informs her that she'll never be a successful hitter.
When Jill's car detonates when Lazlo's men go to release Strabo, it is revealed that Jill was in on the plan as well, having merely shot Jimmy with blanks. With Jules having been exposed as the shooter who killed Strabo, Lazlo shoots her, Jimmy subsequently having Jill shoot Lazlo in the foot, unable to kill the man who raised him. As the group depart, Jimmy and Cynthia reveal that the plan was set up to acquire Lazlo's half of the dollar, the combined dollar revealing the account number for a Gogalak account containing $280 million. With Jill having revealed that she is pregnant, the four drive away.
Read more about this topic: The Whole Ten Yards
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“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)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)