Bill is nearing retirement on the police force. After the murder of an undercover cop, Bill is asked by John Bagwell, head of the local DEA, to let the delivery of a 50 million dollar load of heroin take place so that they can get to the source. Against his better judgement, Bill agrees as long as he can be a part of the operation.
Jake is Bill's son and is also a cop, albeit a bit of a rogue. He is having difficulties in his marriage because he places his work first. His wife, Rebecca, is extremely angry when Jake misses his daughter's birthday party. Bill does his best to talk to the two of them to keep the marriage from disintegrating. Jake says he is doing his best but is afraid of becoming too boring and domestic. Rebecca realizes this is whom she married but just can't take it anymore.
At a stakeout, Bill and John follow the van of the drug dealers to a motel. One of the dealers is already at the motel and is in the process of buying a hooker. The hooker, however, is an undercover decoy who is being backed up by Jake and his partner. As the van gets to the motel, the decoy is discovered to be wearing a wire and a huge shootout breaks out. The van full of dealers get away, the decoy is killed, and all the cops are left empty-handed and angry with each other. This episode causes Jake to miss another family outing and both Rebecca and his daughter are mad.
Jake goes out to find the van. He spots it and a chase ensues in which the van crashes but most of the dealers get away. The van is impounded and the heroin is discovered in the gas tank. We then learn that John, the slimy DEA agent, is helping the crooked head of a drug rehab center to sell the heroin. They kidnap Rebecca and hold her at a warehouse in exchange for the van. Jake and his partner take the van to a nightclub to meet two of the dealers and, with the help of Bill, overpower them and force them to drive them all in the van to the warehouse. It is there that the big climactic shoot out occurs, with plenty of explosions. The bad guys are killed, Rebecca is rescued, John is arrested, and --we assume-Jake and Rebecca live happily ever after.
The plot to this movie is certainly not original and that is its biggest fault - you feel like you've already seen this movie a dozen times. It does have a few good action sequences, including a great car chase. One curious scene has the female drug dealer flirting with Rebecca as she is tied up and blind folded, culminating by injecting her with heroin. The scene ends there and when the action continues we are left wondering what happened - because when we next see Rebecca she is still a hostage but not high on heroin. We are also left up in the air as to Jake and Rebecca's relationship - just because of this incident is their marriage saved? I admit to only seeing this movie on the USA Network - I wonder how much was cut out for "family viewing".
Martin Sheen does a wonderful acting job as usual and Meredith is also quite superb. Charlie Sheen as Jake is okay but his character is not developed, we don't really know why he is not at home more.
Meredith plays Rebecca Peterson, Jake's wife. Her acting is great especially in her scenes with Martin Sheen who, as Bill, loves her like his own daughter. She acts genuinely distraught and torn, running all the emotions a wife would feel when weighing whether to leave her husband or not - anger, frustration, sadness, and hurt. She has a great scene with Charlie Sheen in which she angrily expresses how fed up she is when he misses their daughter's birthday. "…she doesn't need a stuffed animal, she needs a father. Someone who's going to be there for her. That's what I need too." When she is kidnapped, she is angrily defiant, pledging that they will all be blown away when Jake gets there. Meredith even gets to toss a guy on his back as they are escaping the exploding warehouse, showing she's a tough gal herself.