After his football career, Ben Beck returned to his Virginia small town and joined the family building firm. His family happiness with wife Lorrie and adolescent son Jessie is suddenly tested by the return of Ben's first high-school love, Ava Andersson, who visits from Chicago, after a failed marriage, to bury her ma. Ava seduces Ben into reliving their courtship, which she traumatically broke off without a goodbye. Jesse reacts furiously, even backseats his own football scholarship bid, rather pa's projected ambition, in favor of a writing summer course .

A film critic accidentally kills his lover during a spat in which she falls and hits her head. In panic...

A down-and-out film producer agrees to make his nephew's film about 19th century English statesman Benjamin Disraeli, but can only get financing if he casts a well-known action star. Production is halted however, when the lead actor is kidnapped, so the producer hatches a scheme with a struggling creative executive to save the star and the movie.