SYNOPSIS:

The script was inspired by an attempted assassination taking place hours before a major election. The city’s mayoral election in a small city outside Los Angeles will be held in 72 hours. Current mayor Ben Firestone is running for his second term; he’s facing a tough contender Al Gionnelli, an active community facilitator. Two bullets are fired at a political rally—Firestone badly wounded and a bystander (a social activist journalist) dead. A troubled and frustrated police detective Sgt Jay Schaeffer is assigned to solve the case within 72 hours to keep his job. The shooter is caught shortly after the shooting but suffers from severe memory loss as a result of a brain concussion and psychological trauma. A female clinical psychologist Dr. Aisa Rosenthal is brought in to help retrieve the perpetrator’s memories with the hope to shed some light on the case. Aisa happens to be Jay's girlfriend back in college; she walked out on him the night of their graduation party and has been out of reach the past 10 years. Also brought back to the police station is the driver, who tried to escape with the shooter, along with a smashed teddy bear, which turns out to be a spy camera. Excited police officers work on restoring the damaged video clips in the spy camera while the doctor tries one way or another to treat the driver, who is in a coma. A few video clips start to get reconstructed. One of the clips shows the shooter managing to blackmail the dead social activist journalist for what he once did. This seems to coincide with the female psychologist's sessions with the shooter, who was once raped by the journalist as child. Another clip shows the journalist meeting with Al Gionnelli. Unfortunately, the police can't hear the conversation. When Jay and his partner Don are about to look into Al Gionnelli, Al's wife gets shot, dead and Al is too depressed to talk. The driver's condition takes a drastic turn to the worst; before he dies, he cries out, "Death...Valley." And worse still, Don, a gay man who has a crush on Jay, suddenly kills himself. The poll continuously reflects that Al and Ben are neck to neck with one beating the other at one time and then being one-upped later. Regardless of his superior's objection, Jay decides to go straight to the hospital to talk to the current mayor Ben Firestone, who, interestingly, has been out of reach since the shooting. Initially unwilling to be questioned, Ben later agrees--he calls in journalists. Ben's inspirational talk in front of the camera boosts up the poll right away. Ben Firestone wins his second term. At the thank-you speech, he names his contender Al Gionnelli his right-hand man. Jay drops by Aisa's apartment--like she did 10 years ago, Aisa disappears without saying goodbye. Crestfallen, Jay returns to the police station. A computer technician hands to Jay the one last video clip, which he failed to restore in time. It shows Aisa having sex with Ben Firestone in a cheap motel. It turns out that Aisa and Ben fabricated and staged the attempted assassination with the shooter being the main actor. The performance was meant to help Ben get re-elected so that he would be allowed more time to expand his underground organization. As the key arranger of this game, Aisa asked for 1 million dollars in return, distributed three ways among herself, the shooter and the driver. (The shooter went off the script shooting the driver without Aisa's knowledge.) According to the video, Aisa's plan was to escape to Mexico with the money. Jay looks up in the dictionary-- "Aisa" is Goddess of Death and "Rosenthal" means "rose valley" in German. Jay hops in his car and speeds across the Mexican border hoping to catch Aisa and possibly the shooter as well. Ben Firestone and high-ranking police officers, by now knowing that the video with Ben and Aisa having sex is in Jay's possession, want to get the video clip back. A classic western gun fight takes place with almost all dead except two-- one getting the video and the other the 1 million dollars...