Movie special effects expert Roland "Rollie" Tyler is hired by the Justice Department to stage the murder of mob informant Nicholas DeFranco. DeFranco is set to testify against his former American Mafia bosses and go into witness protection, but the Justice Department is afraid he will be killed before the trial. Tyler rigs a gun with blanks and fixes DeFranco up with radio transmitters and fake blood packs to simulate bullet hits. The Justice Department supervisor on the case, Edward Mason, asks Tyler to be the "assassin" wearing a disguise. He is paid $30,000 and assured by Mason that he is "100% protected".
Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is asked by his girlfriend's ex-husband, a cop, to use his special-effects expertise to help catch a serial killer. However, when things go wrong and the cop is killed, he begins to suspect a setup and corruption within the police department. He calls on the help of his friend Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) to investigate the death and they discover the trail leads to an old case involving stolen gold medallions that have been missing for decades. The antagonists mean to retrieve the stolen Medallions and return them to their proper owner, the Catholic church. At the same time, an unknown assassin is trying to kill Rollie and his family in an attempt to destroy all evidence of the murder.