Tense political thriller spanning two continents. Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal), a CIA analyst working in North Africa, starts to question his assignment when he witnesses the brutal interrogation of an Egyptian-American by secret North African police. When Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwalley), an Egyptian-American chemical engineer whose family emigrated to the United States when he was a boy, is suspected of a terrorist act, his pregnant wife, Isabella El-Ibrahimi (Reese Witherspoon), does everything she can to find him when he seemingly disappears during a flight from South Africa to Washington, D.C. She enlists the help of an old college friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard), an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), who uncovers the shocking fact that Anwar has been shipped off to a third-world country for interrogation on the orders of Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep), the CIA's head of the anti-terrorism unit. Isabella and Douglas team up to try to secure Anwar's release from a secret detention facility somewhere in the Middle East.