After seven years of imprisonment in his native France for an infamous art heist, VIiktor Lambert (Gerard Depardieu) returns to Moscow determined to uncover the circumstances behind his son Jeremy‘s brutal murder three months earlier. Immediately upon his arrival at the Hotel Metropol, he is met in Red Square by Inspector Plutova, a young, fierce detective in Moscow’s technologically sophisticated police force. Plutova informs Lambert that he is under surveillance and encourages him not to go back to his old habits. He quickly loses her officers in the streets of Moscow and seeks refuge with his lifelong best friend, renowned Chechen ballet choreographer, Souliman.
Souliman warmly welcomes Viktor home, and explains that Jeremy, who had lived with him during Viktor’s incarceration, had taken a wrong turn over the last few years and become distant, getting involved with drugs. When Jeremy got together with his girlfriend, beautiful young photographer Katerina, Souliman had hoped, fruitlessly, that Jeremy was on a better path.
Knowing Viktor’s heart and his determination to discover the truth for himself, Souliman brings Lambert the cash he’d been entrusted with years before and Jeremy’s watch that he’d received from Katerina at Jeremy’s funeral. That he would stand by his brother through the upcoming battle is inherently understood. Viktor goes to Katerina, desperate to understand his son’s life. Katerina coldly tells Viktor that she left Jeremy in the days just before his murder, as she knew that he was involved with something illegal and she wanted no part of it, or of Viktor’s inquiry. When pressed, she reluctantly tells Viktor a name: VASSILY: the petty dealer who got Jeremy involved with the underworld. This one piece of information sends Viktor off onto a ruthless manhunt, pitting him in a vicious, pitiless game of cat and mouse against sadistic millionaire diamond smuggler and nightclub owner, Anton Belinski and his Italian attorney Claudio Martelli.
Assisted by his long time love and partner-in-crime, glamorous club owner Alexandra Ivanov (Elizabeth Hurley) and Souliman, Viktor stops at nothing to ensure that Katerina, who reveals that she is carrying Jeremy’s child, is safe and that everyone who was involved with bringing down his son gets their due. It becomes a race against time when Plutova arrests Alexandra in order to put a stop to the madness being caused in the streets. In a series of fierce, action filled scenes that tear through Moscow and Grozny, Viktor brutally hunts down his prey until he finally comes face to face with the man responsible for his son’s death.
