Plot
Isaac Barr (Richard Gere) is a top-notch San Francisco Freudian psychiatrist, who has Diana Baylor (Uma Thurman) on the patient's couch. He is treating her for frightening and horrific childhood memories, which include images of her drunken father and his death in a fire for which she wasn't blamed.
One night, Heather Evans (Kim Basinger) enters Barr's office and says she is Baylor's sister. She asks Barr for information about her sister's case. It is implied, as part of the treatment, that Isaac speak to Heather to find out more about her sister's past experiences and determine if she might provide information Diana has forgotten.
Not long after, Heather seduces Isaac, and a steamy affair follows. The problem: Heather is married to Jimmy Evans (Eric Roberts), a violent and wealthy Greek gangster. She also has a way of embarrassing Jimmy in public by taking a sip of wine and then flipping into an attack of "pathological intoxication," which can end with the restaurant in shambles.
It turns out Heather is trying to involve unsuspecting Isaac in a diabolical plan to murder Jimmy and collect a $4 million double indemnity life insurance policy on him. She's also using Diana as bait and wants Isaac framed for the murder.
Read more about this topic: Final Analysis
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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)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)