A sound-effects expert witnesses an accident which leaves a prominent politician dead. He soon realises the crash might have been engineered, and that what he saw and recorded may have been murder. Brian De Palma's psychological thriller, starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow and Dennis Franz.

While recording sound effects for a slasher flick, Jack Terry stumbles upon a real-life horror: a car careening off a bridge and into a river. Jack jumps into the water and fishes out Sally from the car, but the other passenger is already dead — a governor intending to run for president. As Jack does some investigating of his tapes, and starts a perilous romance with Sally, he enters a tangled web of conspiracy that might leave him dead.