Philosophy professor Abe Lucas joins the faculty at Braylin College in
Rhode Island. He is experiencing an
existential crisis, is depressed, sees no meaning in his life, and drinks excessively. Despite this, he catches the eye of two women: chemistry professor Rita Richards and Jill Pollard, one of his students. Jill is in a serious relationship with Roy and lives with her parents. Rita lives with her husband, but is dissatisfied with her marriage. Abe chooses to sleep with Rita but is careful to maintain a strictly platonic relationship with Jill, a gifted student with whom he discusses
Dostoevsky,
Kant, and other philosophical works. His depression intensifies when he fails to get an erection during his first sexual encounter with Rita. At lunch in a diner, Abe and Jill overhear a conversation in the next booth. A distraught woman relates to her companions that she will lose her children in a custody battle in family court because of a series of manipulative rulings that have drained her funds by an unethical judge with connections to the opposing side. Troubled by the injustice and justifying the ethics philosophically, Abe decides to secretly help the woman by murdering the judge. Abe reasons he is unlikely to be caught because he does not know the judge and has no traceable motive. With a new purpose in life, Abe's depression is lifted. He becomes happier and is able to have sex with Rita. He follows the judge for a while to learn his habits. After his jog, the judge always buys
orange juice and sits on a bench to cool down. Abe decides that the best way to kill him is to poison him. Stealing a key to the college's chemistry lab from Rita, Abe furtively steals
cyanide but is seen in the lab by a student. He buys a juice from the same place the judge stops at, puts the poison in his juice cup, sits down on the same bench, then switches the juices while the judge reads a newspaper. The judge dies from
cyanide poisoning. Abe feels reborn, telling himself he has finally done something worthwhile by ridding the world of an evil man. His and Jill's friendship blossoms into a romance. Roy learns of the relationship and breaks up with Jill. Despite Abe's careful planning, Jill and Rita, who are friendly, begin to suspect Abe's involvement in the murder after piecing together clues, such as the missing key and Abe's presence in the chemistry lab. Rita decides that even if he is guilty, she wants to leave her husband and move to Spain with Abe. An increasingly suspicious Jill breaks into Abe's house through a window and discovers incriminating notes scrawled in Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment, citing the murdered judge's name, references to
Raskolnikov, and
Hannah Arendt's quote on the "
banality of evil". When Jill confronts him, Abe admits his guilt, and she ends their romance. When an innocent man is accused of the crime, Jill pressures Abe to surrender himself to the police, warning him that she will report him. Having lately begun to appreciate life, Abe tries to murder Jill by shoving her down an elevator shaft but trips and falls down the shaft to his death. Some time later, Jill, who has reconciled with Roy, stares out at the sea and reflects on her experiences with Abe, asserting that the trauma has lessened in intensity with time but can resurface. ==Cast==