After staging a particularly gory jailbreak, Irish Republican Army agent Ryan Gaerity (Tommy Lee Jones) makes his way to Boston and begins systematically picking off members of the police bomb squad. The leader of this team, Jimmy Dove (Jeff Bridges), is set to retire, but the recent spate of bombings lead him to stay on in an attempt to save as many of his men as possible. It isn't long before he discovers the culprit is his old colleague Gaerity, seeking revenge from their shared past.