Seattle PD Detective Quentin Conners and his partner Jason York are implicated in the death of a hostage taken by a
carjacker named John Curtis. After a fellow police officer, Callo, testifies against them, Conners is suspended, and York is fired. In reality, York tried to shoot Curtis, but accidentally killed the hostage. Curtis in turn fired back, and Conners killed him in self-defense. Some time later, Lorenz and four other criminals take hostages in a bank. Lorenz demands to negotiate with Conners, who is reinstated under the surveillance of a new partner, Shane Dekker. Conners orders a
SWAT unit to cut the building's power and go in, but the criminals flee amidst the chaos following an explosion. At a local diner, Dekker explains that during the negotiations, Lorenz made many cryptic references to
chaos theory. As they leave, Conners puts a ten dollar bill on the table for his share of the bill. Dekker swaps the ten for a twenty of his own. A TV camera caught a shot of one of the criminals, who is arrested together with his girlfriend at her home, where banknotes are found with a scent used to mark evidence collected by the police. The banknote serial numbers did not come from that day's robbery, but instead from police storage having been signed out two weeks earlier by Callo. Callo is found shot dead in his home, together with incriminating evidence linking him to the heist. When reviewing video footage from the bank, Dekker notices that the bank regional manager's computer is deliberately shielded from view. Fingerprints on the keyboard reveal the identity of a hacker that Conners himself had arrested, but whose conviction was overturned after the shooting on the bridge. He had placed a virus in the bank system that would transfer one billion dollars in thousands of small transactions around the world. Conners and Dekker want to question the hacker, but he is shot dead by Lorenz, and a gunfight ensues, during which Lorenz manages to escape. Dekker questions the hospitalized bank robber identified in the news footage and threatens to inject him with a lethal overdose of morphine, although it was only saline solution. The robber reveals Lorenz is Scott Curtis, the brother of John shot earlier. Conners leads a stakeout at Scott's house, where the gang are to meet that night. A shootout results in both suspects' deaths, and a bomb blows up the building while Conners is inside. Dekker realizes that Callo's signature retrieving material from the evidence storage was forged by the evidence custody officer, who reveals that Scott is actually York. Tracking Lorenz/York's mobile phone, Dekker surprises York at a diner, and York takes a woman hostage in a reversal of the standoff on the bridge. Dekker chases and eventually kills York. When Dekker pays for his coffee at the diner, he discovers the banknote Conners used to pay for lunch is also scented, which means Conners was also involved in taking the money from police evidence. Dekker finds a copy of
James Gleick's
Chaos: Making a New Science in Conners' house, showing he had faked an earlier ignorance of the mathematics. On a hunch, Dekker looks for airline tickets booked in Gleick's name and runs to the airport. During a phone call between the now-disguised Conners and the searching Dekker at the busy airport, flashbacks reveal how the seemingly unconnected events in the film form a pattern. Conners reveals that he placed his badge on the corpse of one of York's henchmen before the explosion. Conners and York recruited a group of ex-convicts from their past. Callo was framed for being a dirty cop. Conners ends the call, walks to a private jet, and takes off while sipping champagne. ==Cast==