Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a worn-out private detective, is hired to look for a 16-year-old girl who has run away from the luxury home of her mother, formerly a small-time actress in Los Angeles. The more the weary cynic tries to get under the surface of the seemingly simple case, the harder it is for him to find his bearings among the lies and deceptions that surround him. Eight years after the key New Hollywood film Bonnie and Clyde, Arthur Penn and Gene Hackman reunited to collaborate on what was to become one of the most undervalued films of the decade. Like Polanski in Chinatown or Altman in The Long Goodbye, in his revisionist film noir, Penn also allows the 1940s classic genre to pervade the complex reality of the 1970s. The feelings of bitterness and emptiness in the modern Chandleresque protagonist originate not only in the “public” sphere of the strange, increasingly convoluted case, but in his private life as well (boyhood trauma, a broken marriage). As Moseby remarks of a sporting event, “nobody’s winning … one side is just losing slower than the other.”
莫妮卡(雷文·古德温饰)从同父异母的妹妹西蒙(安珀·莱利饰)的凶残魔掌中逃脱三年后,作为该市排名第一的黄金时段调查电视节目的主持人,她准备在西雅图重新开始。莫妮卡有最好的朋友贝贝(K·米歇尔 K. Michelle 饰)陪伴,还有新欢,一切都在好转。患有失忆症的西蒙正在秘密恢复健康,当她在电视上遇到莫妮卡时,她正在建立新的生活,她的记忆突然回来,导致姐妹之间发生了命运般的重聚。两人能否抛开过去?或者西蒙娜复仇的需要会赢得胜利吗?