In the ruins and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Terence McDonagh (Nicolas Cage), a police detective with corruption seeping through his façade of heroism, faces a mass murder case that unleashes his weirdly deteriorating personality. Using drugs, into mob gambling, McDonagh seems at home in a place where reptilian creatures washed up with the hurricane cavort among the ruins of the city. He is on pain killers for a bad back, and his girlfriend Frankie Donnenfeld (Eva Mendes) who is a prostitute begins to look like a most normal person. In the meantime, McDonagh must protect himself from exposure to colleagues even as he looks into a drug murder of five Senegalese immigrants with his partner Stevie Pruitt (Val Kilmer).