Seattle police detective Quentin Conners (Jason Statham) is bitter after he was unfairly suspended when a hostage crisis goes wrong. But then a bank robbery takes place and once again there are hostages to save. The ring-leader Lorenz (Wesley Snipes) insists he will negotiate only with Conners so the detective is reinstated against his will. He is put in charge of the operation with a new partner in the form of rookie lieutenant Shane Dekker (Ryan Phillippe) riding herd on him. During the standoff an explosion inside the bank causes chaos and the robbers flee by pretending to be hostages. Oddly enough they apparently did not take any of the bank’s cash. As Conners and Dekker attempt to track down the robbers they also must figure out what the gang was doing in the bank. Conners uses his knowledge of Chaos Theory to discover how the criminals were able to loot the bank without stealing anything from its vaults. Lorenz kills off his partners one by one to attempt to elude capture but Connors and Decker catch up with him. They discover that he isn’t the real brains behind the scheme.