The analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) arrives at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for an ultrasecret meeting.

Unfortunately for him, the secret soon come to light: he had fired.

Cox does not fit very well the news and returned to his home in Georgetown, Washington DC, to surrender to the writing of his memoirs and drink. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is dismayed, though not very surprised.

She already  had an affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a federal agent married, and start making plans to leave Cox.

In a neighborhood on the outskirts of the capital, Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand), an employee of Hardbodies Fitness Centers, has trouble concentrating at work.

Just thinking about  an expected full body plastic and she decides to trust her plan to Chad (Brad Pitt).
When a disc from the memoirs of CIA analyst arrives accidentally at the hands of Linda and Chad, they decide to take advantage of this chance.

The events are precipitated in a series of dark and hilarious situations.

I shall eat the next person who tells me that Angelina Jolie cannot act. Starring as Collins, she is the entire, anxious point of Eastwood’s film, and absolutely terrific as a mother who is forcibly reunited with the wrong boy by a Los Angeles Police Department rotten to the core. The high and mighty — namely Mayor George E. Cryer and Police Chief James “Two Guns” Davis (played by Colm Feore) — have an almost psychopathic desire to create good news so that their shoddy house-of-cards empire doesn’t fall around their ears. This being prewar LA you can’t turn a corner without Clint reading you a chapter from Hollywood Babylon. Read L’Echange