Plot

After his wife is assaulted, a husband enlists the services of a vigilante group to help him settle the score. Then he discovers they want a 'favor' from him in return.

In New Orleans, English teacher of the high school Rampart High, Will Gerard, and his wife, musician Laura Gerard, are in love with each other. One night, Laura leaves a rehearsal and is assaulted, while Will is playing chess with his friend Jimmy. Will is visiting her in hospital when, out of the blue, a stranger named Simon tells him that he belongs to an organization of vigilantes and offers to eliminate the assailant. In return, the organization would want a favor from Will in the future. Will agrees, and the criminal is murdered. Six months later, Simon collects his debt with Will. He demands that Will kill Alan Marsh, a pedophile. Will accidentally kills Alan and soon he learns that the victim was an awarded journalist that was investigating the organization. Now he seeks evidences to prove his innocence but the network of the organization is powerful and is seeking Will out to eliminate him.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In New Orleans, Will Gerard (Nicolas Cage) is a humble English teacher at Rampart High School. Will's best friend Jimmy (Harold Perrineau) also works at the school. Will's wife Laura (January Jones) is a musician who is in a local orchestra. One night, after a performance, Laura is beaten and brutally raped by a stranger named Hodge (Alex Van).

At the hospital, while Will is waiting for news about Lauras condition, Jimmy tells a distraught Will that he's confident that the rapist will be found. Will is approached by a man who calls himself Simon (Guy Pearce). Simon tells Will that he represents an organization that deals with people that the justice system has failed to deal with. Simon describes his group as a few citizens seeking justice, and he tells Will that Hodge has raped before, and was paroled three weeks ago.

Simon proposes an intriguing offer: in exchange for a favor from Will, Simon will arrange to have a complete stranger make Hodge pay for Laura's rape, in order to save Will and Laura the undue suffering of a drawn-out trial, because a drawn-out trial would make Laura suffer even more than she already has by repeatedly forcing her to relive the rape, and be traumatized by defense attorneys.

Distraught and grief-stricken, Will consents to the deal. After Hodge gets killed, a picture of Hodge's body, and the medallion that Hodge took from Laura during the rape, are sent to Will as proof that Hodge has been killed. The organization's code phrase is "the hungry rabbit jumps."

Six months after that night, Simon returns, and he asks Will to follow a woman and her two children to the zoo and look out for a man, and if Will sees the man, to call a number attached to a picture immediately. Will agrees to follow the lady and her two children, hoping to, in that way, fulfill his debt.

After Will does that, Simon continues to call Will, asking him to continue to follow that man, telling Will that the man is a sex offender. At first, Will declines, but seeing that he has no choice as Simon promised to exact revenge if he doesn't obey, Will agrees, and Simon assigns Will to kill the man on a pedestrian walkway that's under a high overpass, by "accidentally" bumping him off the walkway to his death, which would make it look like suicide.

Will goes to the walkway, but instead of killing the man, Will decides to see if the man has any answers about Simon. The man, who is already paranoid for some reason, becomes suspicious that Will is trying to kill him, so he throws his bicycle at Will, and the bicycle falls into the traffic below. As they struggle, the man falls off the walkway as Will tries to save him. The man lands, and is hit by a truck.

Will, fearing for his life, goes home, where Detective Rudeski (Joe Chrest) and Detective Green (Marcus Lyle Brown) arrest him and accuse him of murdering the man, who the detectives say is named Alan Marsh. At the station, Will can't get Green and Rudeski to believe anything he says.

Green and Rudeski's boss, Lieutenant Durgan (Xander Berkeley), wants to talk to Will alone. Durgan asks Will to play a game, where Will must complete sentences. After a few rounds, Durgan asks, "The hungry white rabbit," to which Will responds "jumps," signifying his connection to Simon's organization. Durgan lets Will free, telling him that he has 24 hours to get out of the city before Simon and his two men Scar (Irone Singleton) and Cancer (Wayne Pére) come looking for him.

Will runs, but he's looking for answers. He goes to a memorial for Alan, and learns that Alan is not a sex offender -- he's actually an award-winning investigative reporter for the New Orleans Post, and he was investigating the vigilante organization. Now Will knows why Simon wanted Alan dead. After Will leaves, Simon, Scar, and Cancer find Will, and chase him. Will escapes from Simon and Cancer, but Scar chases Will out onto a busy street, where Scar is killed by a truck that hits him and drags him a short distance.

Will looks for Alan's work at a storage facility that Alan uses. Will finds a DVD describing some of the people in the group, along with their missions. When Will tells Laura what's going on, she tells Will that if he was attacked, she would've done the same thing Will did, which means she would've accepted Simon's deal, had he approached her in that kind of situation. Will tells Laura his whereabouts, and he advises her to stay away from the cops, and anyone else who's asking questions.

Will learns that Jimmy is part of the organization, and then learns that Simon's real name is Eugene Cook. Jimmy joined the organization years ago, after his brother was murdered, and the cops were unable to find the killer.

Will calls Cook, and sends him a copy of the DVD, outraged at its implications. Cook agrees to a trade where Will would receive security camera footage proving his innocence in Alan's death as he was acting out of self-defense, in exchange for the DVD. Will agrees, and they agree to meet at the Louisiana Superdome, during a monster truck rally. Upon meeting at the dome, Cook lets Will know that Laura has been kidnapped as an extra incentive to make Will give up the DVD. Jimmy and Cancer are holding Laura.

They go to the abandoned mall next door, where Laura is being held hostage, and Will gives Cook the DVD, but Cook reneges on the deal, and orders that Will and Laura both be killed so there will be no threats to the organization. Cook says that what the organization does is too important to be threatened. Just as Cancer is about to pull the trigger on Laura, Jimmy fatally shoots Cancer, and Jimmy complains to Cook that he thought no one was supposed to get hurt. Cook kills Jimmy.

Will and Cook struggle, falling down a non-moving escalator. They're both injured. Cook raises his gun, and is about to shoot Will. Laura grabs a gun that either Jimmy or Cancer dropped, and she fires six shots into Cook's chest, killing Cook.

Happy to be alive. Will and Laura start walking away. Durgan steps in, asking who killed Cook. Will responds that it was him, but Durgan says "No. The way I see it, the dead guys killed each other. There was no one else here."

With both DVDs in hand, Will clears his name, and he decides to follow up on Alan's work by giving the DVD to Gibbs (Mike Pniewski), a high-ranking reporter at the New Orleans Post. Thanking him, Gibbs responds; "The hungry rabbit jumps, eh?" Gibbs is in the organization.