Jeff Talley is a hostage negotiator in Los Angeles. The film begins with Jeff negotiating with a man who has taken his wife and son hostage after learning she has been cheating on him. Jeff Talley has been watching the situation for a while, and eventually, Jeff hears three gunshots in the house. He runs inside through the barricaded door and finds the man and his wife dead. In the boy's room he finds the dying son, who passes away in Jeff's arms. This leaves Talley emotionally scarred. Soon after, Jeff moves with his family to become police chief in Bristo Camino, a peaceful suburban hamlet in Ventura County, California.

One year after the incident that ended his career with the LAPD, Talley finds himself in yet another hostage situation. Two teenagers and their mysterious accomplice Mars Krupchek take hostage Walter Smith and his two young children in Smith's house after a failed robbery attempt. The first officer to respond to the robbery, Carol Flores, is brutally shot by Mars right before Talley and a fellow officer arrive at the scene. As Talley attempts to rescue the seriously injured officer with his police SUV, the officer dies in front of him. Traumatized by the officer's death and unwilling to put himself through yet another life-or-death situation, Talley hands authority over to the Ventura County Sheriff's Department and leaves the scene.

Unfortunately for Talley, Smith has been laundering money for a mysterious criminal syndicate through offshore shell corporations. He was preparing to turn over a batch of important encrypted files (recorded on a DVD) when he was taken hostage. To protect such incriminating evidence from discovery, the syndicate orders one of their representatives who is known only as the Watchman to kidnap Talley's wife and daughter, and forces him to return to the scene and stall for time until the organization can launch their own attack against Smith's house.

Back at the scene, Talley learns that Mars Krupcheck is a serial killer, who could turn on the hostages and his own accomplices at any moment. The rest of the movie's plot turns on whether Talley can save two families while fighting two separate groups of hostage-takers at the same time. At the end of the movie Talley and Smith go to the inn and have a shootout where Talley's wife and daughter are being held hostage by the Watchman and several other masked armed men.

According to the movie's official production notes, the movie's plot is roughly the same as the novel; the main difference is that a complicated subplot involving the Mafia was removed and the ages of the first group of hostage-takers was lowered slightly. In the novel, Smith's employer is Sonny Benza, a crime overlord whose influence reaches throughout the entire West Coast.