| Director | Bruce Beresford |
|---|---|
| Genre | crime film, thriller film |
| Runtime | 105 min |
| Country | United States |
| Budget | $40 million |
| Box office | $177.8 million |
In 1993, wealthy Whidbey Island residents Libby and Nick Parsons appear to live an idyllic Pacific Northwest life with their four-year-old son, Matty. At a lavish private school fundraiser hosted at their waterfront mansion, Nick presents himself as a charming and cultured businessman, displaying three original 1911 Wassily Kandinsky watercolors from the Blue Rider Almanac, while privately facing investigation for embezzlement and financial pressure from his lender, First Seattle. As a romantic surprise for Libby, Nick buys the Morning Star, her favorite sailboat, and the couple depart for a weekend trip while Libby's close friend Angela watches Matty. During the night, Libby awakens aboard the boat to find blood everywhere, Nick missing, and a bloody knife nearby. The Coast Guard arrives, after receiving a call from Nick claiming to have been stabbed, to find Libby on deck holding the bloody knife.
Although Nick's body is not found, Libby is convicted of murder. Her motive is assumed to be a $2 million life insurance policy and her alleged knowledge that Nick was under investigation for embezzlement. Libby asks Angela to adopt Matty and care for him while she is in prison. When Angela stops bringing Matty to visit, Libby tracks Angela to San Francisco, obtaining her address and phone from school staff, calling on the prison's payphone and demanding to speak with Matty. During their conversation, Nick enters Angela's apartment and Matty calls out, "Daddy!" before the phone disconnects; Libby realizes Nick is alive and faked his death.
Inmate Margaret, a former lawyer, advises her to get paroled, and says that Libby can kill Nick with impunity due to the Double Jeopardy Clause in the US Constitution, meaning she cannot be convicted of the same murder twice. Libby spends her prison time exercising instead of loitering.
After six years in prison, Libby is paroled to a halfway house under supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman. To search for Nick, Libby violates curfew and is caught breaking into Matty's old school to get Angela's records. As Lehman is taking Libby back to prison, she drives his car off a ferry into Puget Sound, grabs his gun, and swims to shore. Going to her mother, she gets emergency cash and an old pickup truck.
Obtaining an address for Angela in Evergreen, Colorado, Libby discovers that Angela married a man named "Simon Ryder" and was killed in an explosion caused by a natural gas leak. An archived newspaper photo of Angela reveals one of Kandinsky's watercolors that hung in their home. At a local gallery, Libby searches the painting’s provenance through ArtScan and confirms it is one of the three 1911 Kandinsky watercolors she and Nick had purchased from the Hauptmann Gallery in New York in 1989. The database shows no subsequent sales until three months earlier, when the work was sold for $550,000 to a museum in Munich. Realizing that Nick must have kept the paintings after faking his death and only recently sold one, Libby follows the sale record, which traces Nick to New Orleans. Lehman almost catches her at the gallery, but she flees. In New Orleans, she finds Nick running a boutique hotel under the alias "Jonathan Devereaux".
Libby confronts Nick publicly at a party he hosts at the hotel, drawing him aside and demanding he return Matty in exchange for her not exposing him. Claiming he faked his death to avoid bankruptcy and to provide her and Matty with the insurance money, Nick says he never believed she would be convicted. She refuses to buy either this story or about Angela's circumstances of death. Libby demands to meet Nick at the public Lafayette Cemetery the next day to get Matty. During their conversation, Lehman arrives at the hotel, and Libby slips out. Lehman informs "Jonathan" that Libby believes he is her supposedly dead ex-husband and informs the police that she is in the area.
At Lafayette Cemetery, Nick has a local boy lure Libby into one of the mausoleums, attacks her, and entombs her alive, but she frees herself. Meanwhile, Lehman visits "Jonathan's" office and notices the Kandinsky artwork Libby researched at the gallery. Now skeptical of Libby's guilt, Lehman gets a photocopy of Nicholas Parsons' driver's license.
Lehman intercepts Libby, who breaks down sobbing. He goes to Nick's hotel and reveals to Nick that he understands Nick's true identity. After Lehman asks for a $1 million bribe for his silence, but agrees to take $100,000, expressing concern that Libby could blow their deal, Nick says that he has "buried" that problem. Libby then enters the room with Lehman's gun. She and Lehman have cornered Nick, and Libby says she can kill him with impunity. After Nick discloses that Matty is at a Georgia boarding school, Lehman reveals that he recorded Nick's confession of burying Libby. Nick pulls a gun, shooting and wounding Lehman. In the ensuing struggle, Libby shoots and kills Nick. Lehman insists they return to Washington to win her pardon. They later find Matty at the boarding school, where he recognizes Libby, saying he had been told she was dead, and they embrace.