Plot
In New Orleans, Will Gerard is a humble English teacher at Rampart High School, where his best friend Jimmy is his boss. Will's wife Laura 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.
At the hospital, while Will is waiting for news about Laura's condition, Jimmy tells a distraught Will that he is confident that the rapist will be found. A stranger who calls himself Simon tells Will that he represents an organization that deals with criminals the justice system has not. Simon describes his group as "a few citizens seeking justice." He says Hodge was paroled three weeks before his attack on Laura, that he has raped other women before, and that he will do it again.
Simon proposes an intriguing offer; in exchange for a favor from Will to be determined later, Simon will arrange to have a complete stranger make Hodge pay for Laura's rape. This would spare Will and Laura a drawn-out trial, which would make Laura suffer even more than she already has by repeatedly forcing her to relive the rape and to be traumatized by defense attorneys. Distraught and grief-stricken, Will consents to the deal. Hodge is killed, and a picture of Hodge's body, along with a necklace that Hodge took from Laura during the rape, are sent to Will as proof. The organization's code phrase is: "The hungry rabbit jumps."
Six months later, Simon returns. He wants Will to follow a woman and her two children to the zoo and to look out for a man. If Will sees this man, he must call a number attached to a picture. Will agrees, hoping this will fulfill his debt. Simon, however, continues to call Will, asking him to continue what he is doing, claiming the man is a sex offender. Having no choice, as Simon promises to exact revenge if he does not obey, a reluctant Will agrees. He is instructed to kill the man on a pedestrian walkway that is under a high overpass by "accidentally" bumping him off it to his death, making it look like suicide.
Instead of killing the man, Will decides to see if the man has any knowledge of Simon. The man, already paranoid, becomes suspicious that Will is there to kill him. He throws his bicycle at Will. As they struggle, the man falls off the walkway despite Will's efforts to save him. The man lands and is hit by a truck. Will goes home, where Detective Rudeski and Detective Green arrest him for murdering the man, whose name is Alan Marsh. At the station, Will is unable to convince Green and Rudeski to believe anything he says. The detectives' boss, Lieutenant Durgan, wants to talk to Will alone. Durgan wants to play a game, asking Will to complete sentences. After a few rounds, Durgan asks, "A hungry rabbit..." to which Will responds "Jumps. A hungry rabbit jumps", signifying his connection to Simon's organization. Durgan lets Will go free, giving him 24 hours to get out of the city before Simon and his henchmen Scar and Cancer come looking for him.
Will goes to a memorial for Alan and finds out that the man was not a sex offender but actually an award-winning investigative reporter for the New Orleans Post, who was investigating the vigilante organization. Will now knows why Simon wanted Alan dead. Simon, Scar, and Cancer suddenly turn up. Scar chases Will out onto a busy street, but is accidentally killed by an SUV that hits and drags him. Will goes to a storage facility that Alan used and finds a disc describing some of the people in the group, along with their missions. Will explains what is happening to Laura, who says she would have done the same had their situations been reversed. Will then tells Laura his whereabouts, advising her to stay away from the cops and anyone else who is asking questions.
Will learns that Simon's real name is Eugene Cook and that Jimmy joined the organization years ago after his brother was murdered and the cops were unable to find the killer. Will sends Cook a clip of a video by phone, showing that he has the disc and what it contains. Cook agrees to a trade where Will will receive the security camera footage proving his innocence in Alan's death, as he was acting out of self-defense, in exchange for the disc. Will agrees, and they agree to meet at the Louisiana Superdome, during a monster truck show.
At the dome, Will is told that Laura has been kidnapped and he is shown a photo of Laura gagged with tape as an extra incentive to make him give up the disc. They go to a nearby mall, abandoned since Hurricane Katrina. Jimmy, Cancer, and a man called Sideburns are holding Laura at gunpoint, with her hands tied and duct tape over her mouth. Will gives up the disc, but Cook reneges on the deal, saying that Will and Laura will both be killed to remove all threats to the organization. He orders them to be shot, only to be distracted by Will branding him a hypocrite. Cancer is about to pull the trigger on a bound and tapegagged Laura when he is fatally shot by Jimmy, after which Will forces Sideburns down an inactive escalator, then through the glass at the bottom of the escalator. Sideburns is killed when a chunk of the glass impales his neck.
Jimmy says that they did not get into the organization to kill innocent people, with Cook and Jimmy exchanging gunfire until Cook kills Jimmy with two shots to the chest (mockingly demanding that Jimmy is happy about their predicament). Laura removes the strip of duct tape gagging her mouth and flees with a gun in her hand. Cook catches her and throws her into a glass display case, causing her to drop the gun. Will arrives and begins beating up Cook, but both fall onto another escalator, rolling to the bottom. Laura, who has grabbed the gun that Cook forced her to drop, shoots Cook six times, killing him.
Happy to be alive, Will and Laura walk back up the escalator. Durgan arrives, asking who killed Cook. Will responds that it was him, but Durgan says that the way he sees it, they killed each other and there was no one else present. He leaves in order to arrange the evidence to prove this.
With the disc still in hand, Will is cleared of any wrongdoing. He decides to follow up on Alan's work by giving the disc to Gibbs, a reporter whom Will met at Alan's memorial. Thanking him, Gibbs says, "The hungry rabbit jumps, eh?" indicating to a surprised Will that Gibbs, too, may well be part of the organization.
