The movie begins with a fidgety man who is shown being interviewed by someone (like an investigator) asking him about the meaning of the phrase ‘hungry rabbit jumps’. I am not sure if he answered since the next clip shows him going out to his car in a parking lot then another car comes in behind him and pushes his car over the edge of the parking lot which makes him fall to death. The movie is actually about an English teacher, Will Gerard (Nicolas Cage) who was shown celebrating their anniversary thru dinner with his wife, a musician while the news on TV about the ‘accident’ at the carpark plays in the background. The two proceed to a dance club with some friends, like Jimmy, who also works as a security officer at the high school.
One night, while Will and Jimmy hang out at their regular chess club meeting and after a performance, Will’s wife was beaten and brutally raped by a stranger inside her car. When Will gets out of the chess club he sees a frantic message on his cellphone so he proceeds to the hospital. There he sees his wife badly bruised and unconscious and is comforted by Laura’s friend and Jimmy. While he is waiting for news about Laura’s condition, Will is approached by a man who offers to ‘take care’ of the man who did this to his wife. He tells him that he comes from an organization that doesn’t believe in the justice system due to its propensity to let go of criminals who were guilty due to a technicality. In fact, he revealed that the suspect who did this to his wife was paroled just three weeks ago. Instead, the man, Simon, proposes that in exchange for a favour from Will in the future, Simon will arrange for someone to make Hodge (the suspect) pay for what he did to Laura. This will save both Laura and Will from the undue suffering that a trial may bring. He claims they are just a few citizens seeking justice and are tired of watching the city ‘go to hell’.
Will consents to the deal and a few hours later, Hodge is killed. A picture of Hodge’s body and the necklace that Will gave his wife as an anniversary present was sent to him as proof. The next morning, when Laura wakes, Will told her that the police found her rapist, dead, that he committed suicide. A few days later, Will and Laura go home and they struggle to find normalcy in their lives once again.
Six months later, the couple is seen still struggling to get over the incident. Laura always makes sure that Will lock the door when he comes in and asked if she can have a gun but Will won’t agree to it. Instead, Laura takes gun shooting lessons and buys pepper spray. Then, one night while he and Laura were playing billiards, Simon contacts him and asks him to follow a woman and her two kids to the zoo and look out for a man. Then, if Will sees the man, he should call a number attached to the picture immediately. Will agrees thinking this might be the favour that Simon wants in exchange for their ‘taking care’ of the guy who raped his wife.
But it seems the ‘favor’ does not end there as Simon in fact wanted him to kill the guy since he is a sex offender. At first, Will declines but Simon harasses him even at school and approaches while having dinner with his wife so he had no choice but to obey. Simon instructs Will to kill the man while he passes by a pedestrian walkway under a high overpass by accidentally bumping him to make it look like a suicide. However, instead of killing the man, he decides to talk to him and ask him about Simon. But the man, already paranoid, tries to escape Will and throws his bike at him, they struggle and the man falls off the walkway despite Will trying to save him.
Will, obviously distraught, goes home and his wife asks him about her necklace which she finds in the trunk of his car. She leaves when he is unable to provide him a satisfying answer. Then two detectives arrive to arrest him for the murder of the man in the pedestrian walk since CCTV footage clearly placed him on the scene before the incident and then running after he fell. Will tried to tell them what happened but the two detectives don’t seem to believe what he says. The two detectives’ boss, Lt. Durgan, talks to Will alone and after a few questions, they play a game where Will must complete his sentences. The detective then asks, ‘the hungry rabbit...’ to which Will responds ‘jumps’. Durgan then sets Will free, tells him to walk out after ten seconds and to leave the city within twenty four hours or else they will kill him and make it look like a suicide.
Will escapes the precinct using the pass/ID provided for him by Durgan. Laura tries to talk to Will but was surprised when the detectives answer his phone. Instead of running, Will tries to search for answers and finds out that Alan Marsh, the guy he was sent to kill was not really a sex offender but a journalist for the New Orleans Post. He was investigating the ‘secret vigilante organization’ before his death and now Will knew why Simon wanted him dead. Will visits Laura at her rehearsal and tells her everything. She understood and admits if someone approached her that night, she would have done the same thing. Then, they see the cops who arrested Will at home so he had to leave. He advised her though not to go home and proceed instead to a hotel.
Will decides to attend the memorial for Allan held at a local pub to find out more about Allan’s ‘research/investigation’ into the organization. His friends admit that he was indeed investigating the secret group and was, in fact, about to make it public so they figured they killed him and made it look like a suicide. Then, Will saw Simon and his other gangster friends at the same pub looking for him so he runs away, jumping out onto the freeway and dodging cars. One of them, Scar, follows him but was killed after being hit by a truck.
Simon then tricks Laura into coming with them, telling her that they have new evidence to prove that Will is innocent. Inside the car, Laura asks about the new evidence and they evasively answer that they will show her at the police station. She realizes then that the two guys who have her are not really cops so she used pepper spray on them and escapes. Meanwhile, Will enters the newspaper office and searches at the desk of Allan Marsh to search where he kept his files on the investigation. He chances upon some paper receipts/notes on Allan’s desk then proceeds to a storage facility which he discovered that Allan uses. Inside he finds some discs containing all of Allan’s investigation files. He escapes just as a police car arrives after the watchman reported his presence there (he saw Will’s photo in the newspaper).
Will finds out more about the syndicate run by Simon and learns that Simon is out of control. He also finds out more people involved in the organization, including his friend, Jimmy. Will confronts Jimmy and admits he joined some fifteen years ago after his brother was murdered. He coerces Jimmy using a gun and learns that Simon’s real name is Eugene Cook. Will is confronted by someone who tried to kill him and called him a pedophile. He knew then that the man was forced by Simon to follow him. Will instead lets the man go but uses his cellphone to contact Simon and work out a trade - he will give a copy of the video from Allan’s investigation in exchange for the security footage that proves Will’s innocence in Allan’s murder.
The two agree to meet at the Superdome during a game of monster cars. Meanwhile, Jimmy and another of Cook’s henchmen (Cancer) kidnap Laura as a form of insurance. They meet by a hotdog stand and there Will learns that Laura is being held hostage at an abandoned mall next door. Will gives cook the DVD but decided that they both be killed so that he would not anymore be able to threaten their organization since what they do is too important. However, just as Laura was about to be shot, Jimmy shoots Cancer while Will pushes the other guy beside him down the escalator. Jimmy tells Cook that he promised not to hurt his friends and so Cook shoots Jimmy dead. Cook and Will struggle and they both fall down the escalator then as Cook was about to shoot Will, Laura fires shots straight into Cook’s chest. The two start to walk away until Lt. Durgan arrives and when he asked who killed Cook, Will respond that it was him. Durgan said however that it seemed the dead guys killed each other and that he never saw them both. Next scene shows news footage of Will having been cleared of the murder of Allan Marsh. Will decides to give Allan’s investigation to a senior reporter at the New Orleans Post but as the guy was leaving, he utters the phrase, ‘the hungry rabbit jumps, eh?’ signifying that he, too, belonged to the organization.
(photo grabbed from IMDB)
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