- An assassin hides out in Italy for one last assignment.
- Alone among assassins, Jack is a master craftsman. When a job in Sweden ends more harshly than expected for this American abroad, he vows to his contact Pavel that his next assignment will be his last. Jack reports to the Italian countryside, where he holes up in a small town and relishes being away from death for a spell. The assignment, as specified by a Belgian woman, Mathilde, is in the offing as a weapon is constructed. Surprising himself, Jack seeks out the friendship of local priest Father Benedetto and pursues romance with local woman Clara. But by stepping out of the shadows, Jack may be tempting fate.—Anonymous
- After he survives an ambush beside a remote Swedish lake, an American hit man goes to Rome and contacts his control, Pavel, who sends him to an Abruzzian town with the warning, "No friends." He takes one look and goes instead to nearby Castelvecchio where he poses as a photographer and waits for his control to take care of the Swedish problem. While waiting, his control gives him a job constructing a special weapon for a Belgian assassin, he converses with the town's priest, and he spends the occasional night with Clara, a local prostitute. After the priest calls him out on his profession and the Swedes get a line on his whereabouts, is it time to get out?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
- In Dalarna, Sweden, the lonely hit man and craftsman Jack has a tragic encounter with two assassins hired to kill him and survives an ambush. Jack travels to Rome and calls his contact Pavel (Johan Leysen) that meets him in a cafeteria, gives a Fiat Tempra to him and asks Jack to travel to the countryside for a next assignment. Sooner a woman called Mathilde meets Jack and delivers the specification of a sophisticated weapon to be constructed by him. While living in the village and building the weapon, Jack befriends the local priest and has sex with the prostitute Clara. The distrustful Jack gets closer to Clara and sooner they date outside the brothel. When Jack tells Pavel that this work will be his last one and he will retired after delivering the weapon, Jack is betrayed and he does not know who can be trusted.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Jack (George Clooney), a gunsmith and contract killer, and his lover Ingrid (Irina Björklund) are relaxing in a remote cabin in Sweden. While they are walking, Jack becomes alarmed by a single pair of footprints in the snow. His instincts kick in just as sniper gunshots ring out. As they dive for cover, a panicked and horrified Ingrid watches Jack pull a gun from his pocket. Jack quickly silences her questions and shoots the approaching sniper. Ingrid is almost in shock from the events. She begins to understand something is seriously wrong beyond the fact that she and Jack have just been attacked. As Jack begins to probe the murdered assassin's clothing for identification she asks him what he is doing. Jack knows his true identity is in jeopardy and that he cannot allow Ingrid to call the police. He instructs her to go into the house and make the call and with cold detachment, shoots her in the back as she runs past.
Jack then tracks down a second assassin lurking in the snow and kills him. He flees to Rome and contacts a "business associate", his handler named Pavel (Johan Leysen). Pavel insists that Jack cannot stay in Rome, sends him to Castelvecchio (a small town in the mountains of Abruzzo) and tells him "Don't make any friends, Jack." Jack becomes nervous, and, disposing of the cell phone which Pavel had given him, goes to nearby Castel Del Monte instead. Jack has been deeply shaken by the events in Sweden. As a contract killer for hire, his skills as an assassin have been a commodity he has coldly and stoically sold, but the murder of Ingrid, a friend in the wrong place at the wrong time, causes him great anguish.
While in Abruzzo, Jack (now going by the name Edward and posing as a photographer) contacts Pavel, who sets him up with another job. He meets with a woman, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten), who wants him to build a custom-designed sniper rifle for an assassination. He also begins patronizing a prostitute, Clara (Violante Placido) and they begin a relationship separate from her business duties. His considerable skills as a craftsman are on display as he fashions a custom sound suppressor for the gun out of spare parts and drive shaft bearings obtained at a local automotive garage and an attache case for its concealment and transport. Jack meets with Mathilde to test the weapon, based on a Ruger Mini-14 (referred to in the film as an M14). Mathilde is impressed by the craftsmanship, but asks that Jack make a few more adjustments. Later, Jack realizes that he is being followed by an assassin from Sweden, whom he kills.
Jack begins to be tormented by dreams of the events in Sweden and regret for having killed Ingrid to cover his true identity. His relationship with a local priest Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli) causes him to question his life choices and the emptiness of his life on the run. Both Mathilde and Clara notice Jack's association with butterflies, Mathilde by his expertise on endangered butterflies and Clara by his prominent tattoo. When Father Benedetto tells Jack he senses he lives in a special kind of hell..."a place without love", Jack begins to allow himself to feel love for Clara and he begins to envision a life with her.
Jack talks to Pavel one last time, asking how the Swedes have possibly found him. His paranoia grows to the point that even Clara comes under suspicion when Jack discovers a small pistol in her purse she keeps for protection. While on a picnic, he sees Clara reach into her bag and he retrieves a gun from inside the picnic basket. His eyes fill with despair that he might have to kill another woman he has been intimate with to cover his identity. Clara removes a tube of sunscreen from her bag and asks a greatly relieved "Edward" to put some on her back. In the car, Jack questions Clara about the gun and is satisfied with her explanation. She asks him to take her home with him. Jack refuses but his outward facade of the stone faced, cold blooded killer is crumbling.
Jack agrees to deliver the weapon to Mathilde as his last job, but at the last moment he reopens the briefcase and modifies the rifle. At the drop-off, Jack becomes suspicious that Mathilde plans to kill him. Before anything can happen, a busload of school children arrives, and the two separate. While driving away, Mathilde is contacted by Pavel, who asks if she has killed Jack. She informs him she has not, but insists that she is following Jack and will kill him.
In town, Clara meets Jack in the crowd at a local religious procession. Jack realizes his life as an assassin is over and that he has fallen deeply in love with Clara..He asks her to go away with him and she agrees. Mathilde attempts to assassinate Jack from a nearby rooftop, but the rifle backfires and explodes in her face due to Jack's adjustments. Seeing her fall from the roof, Jack shoves an envelope thick with cash from the gun deal into Clara's hands and tells Clara to go to a river where they previously picnicked and wait for him. He runs to Mathilde, who is dying on the pavement, and discovers she works for Pavel, the same as Jack does.
As Jack goes to meet Clara, he notices that Pavel is following him. They exchange gunfire, and Pavel is killed. Jack doesn't realize he has been shot at first and he drives to meet Clara at the river. As his physical distress begins to alarm him, Jack feels his abdomen and blood soaked shirt realizing for the first time he has been injured. He pounds the steering wheel with a bloody fist in anger and despair. Jack arrives at the picnic spot and as he sees Clara, he collapses. Clara screams and runs to the car. A white, endangered butterfly flits skyward from Jack's car back-lit by ethereal light filtering through the tall trees of the forest. The credits roll.
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