Christmas Day. In the attic of a London mansion, a masked man stands over a disgraced financier, holding a can of petrol and a match. Looking on are the terrified man's wife and daughter, who has a primed grenade tied around her throat. The last hostage is a delivery boy - in the wrong place at the wrong time. Ed Mallory, blind hostage negotiator, is feeling the pressure after his last case went painfully wrong. But as he begins his tentative negotiations, it begins to dawn on him that this case is more complex, and more cruel, ...