Nicole Kidman, Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey star in this steamy crime thriller set in rural Florida at the end of the 1960s. Charlotte Bless (Kidman), a garishly seductive femme fatale, enlists the help of returning Miami Times investigative reporter Ward Jansen (McConaughey) and his black colleague Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) as she tries to overturn the conviction of death row inmate Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), who is accused of murdering a local racist sheriff. But as a mutual resentment simmers between Yardley and Ward's adolescent younger brother, Jack (Efron), the investigation threatens to get derailed as the main protagonists find themselves swept up in a heady cocktail of heat, lust and violence.