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This movie is basically about a guy who constantly gets screwed over because he cares about other people. Jimmy Kilmartin, played by David Caruso, used to be a car thief, but at the beginning of the movie he's trying to live a straight life with his wife and his baby daughter. Then his cousin shows up and guilt trips him into helping transport stolen cars. A couple of being-screwed-over-because-he-cares episodes later, Jimmy is forced to help the police catch a major badass named Little Junior Brown (Cage). He'll die if he doesn't help the cops and he'll die if Little Junior finds out he's ratting on him and the cops aren't interesting in saving his hide beyond getting their conviction.
I really like this story. The characters are real and their aren't any holes in the plot that I noticed, though I found the way the story is laid out to be mediocre. The tempo is too slow at times. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Jackson, as a good cop who starts out with a grudge against Caruso's character, and Cage. Little Junior was not your standard stock bad guy; he was part smart, part stupid, part vulnerable, part hard as nails, part evil, and part funny. The real weak link in this film (other than a kind of stupid theme song) is David Caruso, who is just not that great an actor. This is most glaringly obvious in the scenes when he's supposed to be acting badassed and it's funny for all the wrong reasons. See this movie for a good story, not a good leading man.
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