Philip Marlowe (Liam Neeson) is employed by a rich attractive woman (Diane Kruger) to find her lover who worked in a film studio and was supposedly killed in a hit and run car accident. As he investigated things get complicated with her glamorous mother (Jessica Lange), Mexican drug smugglers, blackmail and murder. This is suitably tristed and covoluted story in the film noir tradition, including Diane Kruger as the femme fatale.