Duchovny plays Eugene Sands, a surgeon who has his medical license revoked after operating under the drug abuse of amphetamines and opiates. Hutton's character, a crime lord named Raymond Blossom, happens upon him in a bar (establishment) where Sands saves someone's life with an emergency procedure to inflate a pneumothorax. Blossom hires Sands as his personal physician, patching up his accomplices when they cannot go to a hospital, and tending to the crime boss and his gun moll, Claire (Jolie). In the final act of the film, Claire and Sands become involved, and he must face up to conflicting loyalties to Blossom, Claire, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who has blackmailed him into being an informant.