Small Crime 2008

Former cop Joe Denton is released from jail after serving six years for a violent act tied to the mob’s payroll. His past earns him the nickname “slash cop” and leaves him isolated from the police and estranged from the city he once patrolled. He moves in with his aging parents and tries to reconnect with his life, including reaching out to his ex-wife online and speaking briefly to one of his daughters. The conversation is tense and quickly turns charged when his ex-wife warns that she will press charges if he ever contacts them again.

In a bid to reclaim some sense of normalcy, Denton heads to a bar where he runs into Scotty, the brother of his slain partner, who offers him help if he ever needs it. A young bar regular asks for a ride home, and Denton is stunned when she reveals herself to be the daughter of the district attorney, Phil Coakley. The moment turns brutal when two men drag Denton from his car after she bloodies herself, and Denton ends up savagely beating them. He is questioned by the police, and Coakley acknowledges that the evidence supports Denton’s side of the story but still refuses to overlook the past. The encounter leaves a bitter taste in the air, as Coakley’s influence and Lieutenant Pleasant’s corrupt stance make it clear that Denton’s redemption is far from simple.

Pleasant pushes Denton toward a brutal option: kill Manny Vassey, a mob boss who has lost faith in his own ruthless ways and now finds religion on his deathbed. Coakley’s investigation and the mob boss’s fragile conscience loom over Denton, and Pleasant promises to help renegotiate his settlement with his ex-wife if he eliminates Vassey.

Denton travels to Vassey’s home, intent on suffocating the dying mob boss, but his mission is interrupted by Charlotte Boyd, Vassey’s hospice nurse. Denton’s polite courtesy contrasts with the blunt cruelty surrounding him, and the encounter with Vassey’s sadistic son, Junior, foreshadows further danger: Junior openly resents the way his father’s impending death would affect him, and he makes it clear he will not tolerate any interference.

Back at home, Denton’s parents demand honesty, and his lies push them further away. He and Boyd grow closer after meeting again in a diner, and their budding relationship gives Denton a glimmer of hope. Yet Pleasant continues to pressure him, threatening Denton’s family until a plan to access Vassey falls through. When that plan collapses, Pleasant suggests a different target—Coakley.

Denton breaks into Coakley’s house, but he cannot bring himself to kill the DA. Instead, he hires Toni, a prostitute connected to Coakley, to secretly record him, hoping to use the evidence to force a different outcome. Denton sets up a camera in Coakley’s motel room and waits, but chaos erupts when Toni’s boyfriend Rooster arrives and kills Toni out of jealousy. Coakley retaliates by killing Rooster, and Denton realizes the camera may have exposed more than he intended. He returns to his life of waiting and aimless fear, hoping Coakley hasn’t discovered the recording.

A new wave of violence hits when an unknown assailant shoots Denton’s parents’ house, wounding his mother. Denton confides in Boyd, who reassures him that things will work out—unbeknownst to him, she ends up killing Vassey. Junior catches Boyd in the act, and Denton is kidnapped by Junior’s men. Junior reveals the brutal truth: he has tortured and likely killed Boyd. Scotty bursts onto the scene just as Denton tries to deny any involvement with Vassey’s death. The two men fight through the chaos, killing Junior and his henchmen, but Scotty is wounded in the process.

As the tension escalates, Denton learns from Coakley that Denton himself may be implicated in Scotty’s brother’s death, ordered by Junior years before. Denton is forced to flee, leaving Scotty to die, and is later informed by Pleasant that Coakley died in a car accident—Coakley had become distracted while watching the recording of his own shooting of Rooster.

Consumed by rage and haunted by the wreckage of his life, Denton ransacks his parents’ house for hidden money, hoping to secure a future for his children. He finds the funds but faces a devastating interference from his father: a knife fight that leaves Denton mortally wounded. In his final moments, Denton manages to alter the scene, wiping his father’s fingerprints from the knife and adding his own, making the wound appear self-inflicted as he drifts toward death.