Based on Richard Price's bestselling novel, which opens as a bruised and bloodied white woman named Brenda Martin stumbles into a Dempsey, New Jersey, emergency room, claiming that a black man stole her car with her four-year-old son in the backseat. Veteran detective Lorenzo Council is assigned to investigate the case, and despite reservations about Brenda's story, he launches an all-out search for the abducted boy.

Jesse Haus, an ambitious young reporter for the local newspaper, also suspects that Brenda is hiding something, and she befriends the grief-stricken mother in an attempt to break the biggest story of her career. But as the search for the alleged carjacker intensifies, smoldering racial tensions between the predominantly black city of Dempsey and its mostly white neighbor, Gannon, threaten to explode.

Directed by
Joe Roth

Cast
Samuel L. Jackson - Lorenzo Council
Julianne Moore - Brenda Martin
Edie Falco - Karen Collucci
Ron Eldard - Danny Martin
William Forsythe - Boyle
Aunjanue Ellis - Felicia
Anthony Mackie - Billy Williams
LaTanya Richardson Jackson - Marie
Clarke Peters - Reverend Longway
Peter Friedman - Lt. Gold

Production Co.
Scott Rudin Productions

Produced by
Charles Newirth
Scott Rudin
Richard Baratta

Studio
Columbia Pictures

Writer
Richard Price

Music
James Newton Howard