Stars:
Ashley Judd,
Samuel L. Jackson,
Andy Garcia,
David Strathairn,
Russell Wong,
Mark Pellegrino,
D.W. Moffett,
Leland Orser,
Bill Duke,
Camryn Manheim
Director:
Philip Kaufman
Summary: Against the moody, fog-laden backdrop of the San Francisco waterfront, police detective Jessica Shephard (Ashley Judd) becomes embroiled in a darkly personal hunt for a serial killer in this Hitchcockian psychological thriller directed by Philip Kaufman (THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING, QUILLS). Jessica, a San Francisco street cop, has been appointed detective by Police Commissioner John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson), her surrogate father and mentor. Together with her new partner Mike Delmarco (Andy Garcia), she goes after her first assignment, a murder, and is ready for anything until she realizes that the corpse is a man she once slept with. What seems like a bizarre coincidence becomes all too suspicious when the next murder victim is also an acquaintance of the police detective--who is also a blackout drinker with an appetite for anonymous, rough sex. Nightly she returns home, drinks a glass of red wine, and awakens to the news of another victim. Haunted by her own family tragedy (her father went on an insane killing spree and killed her own mother and himself), Jessica begins to doubt her own sanity and suspect herself to be the killer.