It’s 1982, and everyone is trying to “Escape From New York.” Terence Devine, a charismatic Vice cop with one eye on removing his family to Florida, is caught on tape taking money from a procurer. Forced to cooperate with the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into his own unit, his position becomes even more precarious when he’s linked to the murder of a sex worker whose clients included some of the city’s wealthiest and most powerful men. Despite his fevered efforts to deflect the inquiry into her death, Devine receives a life sentence for killing her.
Forty years later his long-estranged daughter, Sheila, a documentary filmmaker, reaches out to him in prison. When they meet, Devine insists he’s innocent. Sheila feels profoundly reluctant about delving into her past and strongly doubts the claims of a father she deeply resents, but she sees the potential in making a film about him. While she examines his case she beings to question his guilt, and she suspects that the victim obtained information from her clients that made her a dangerous woman because she learned too much about their sometimes illegal plans to remake the city. As Sheila plunges into her project, she begins to believe, with good reason, that her own life is in danger.
