Plot

An Internal Affairs agent becomes obsessed with bringing down a cop who has managed to maintain a spotless reputation despite being involved in a web of corruption.

Keen young Raymond Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.—Jeremy Perkins {J-26}

Earnest Raymond Avilla has just begun his assignment in the LAPD's Internal Affairs Division (IAD) partnered with capable and bright Amy Wallace, the IAD arguably the most hated division by the non-IAD officers in its members being seen as opportunistic in getting ahead in the force investigating their "brothers". To show that he is above board, Raymond agrees as his and Amy's first case as partners that of Van Stretch, Raymond wanting to seem impartial despite he and Van going back to their days together in the academy. Although there does seem to be improper conduct by Van, Raymond begins to believe a bigger, more dangerous fish is Van's partner Dennis Peck, who outwardly is seen as the model officer by the force's highers-up. What Raymond sees in Dennis is a bright officer too content in his relatively low position within the force, he who is able to live beyond his means, especially in having to pay alimony and child support to several ex-wives. In reality, Dennis is not only a womanizer and chronic philanderer in still fooling around with other women despite again being married, but is a master manipulator in working every situation to his benefit and often illegal end goals, that manipulation often of crime scenes and of his fellow officers, including Van and by association Van's occasionally battered wife, Penny Stretch. What ensues is a game of cat and mouse between Raymond and Dennis which becomes personal in both sides using the other's family - Dennis' wife Heather Peck and Raymond's contemporary art gallery curator wife Kathleen Avilla - to achieve their respective end goals, which may be more dangerous for Raymond and Kathleen as Dennis has and will kill to protect his way of life.—Huggo

Ambitious LA cop with Latin temper moves to Internal Affairs department where he's paired up with lesbian superior. Immediately involved in police brutality case, his pursuit of the young police officer leads him to cross swords with an amoral, possibly sociopathic police sergeant who controls a seemingly department wide network of corruption. Physical and pychological battle between them involving violence, murder and some, occasionally rough, sex ends in triumph for the good guys as usual but with some thought provoking character exploration along the way as the film develops. Sympathethic treatment of the gay female IA officer ahead of its time.