The film stars Nicolas Cage as a detective investigating a political assassination at a boxing match in Atlantic City, with supporting roles played by Gary Sinise, Carla Gugino, John Heard, Stan Shaw, Kevin Dunn, Joel Fabiani and Luis Guzmán.

As the first round begins, Kevin is distracted by an attractive redhead named Serena who wears a ruby ring, and leaves his seat, which is then taken by Julia Costello, a mysterious woman with platinum blonde hair and a white satin suit.

When Ruiz unexpectedly knocks out Tyler, gunshots ring out, mortally wounding Kirkland and grazing Julia, who loses her glasses and blonde wig, revealing her naturally dark hair.

Despite the lockdown, Julia escapes into the casino, covers her wounds in pieces of cloth from her blouse and steals a black satin jacket to disguise herself.

Rick notices that the supposedly knocked-out Tyler awoke instantly at the sound of the shots, and after studying the fight tape, realizes the knockout punch didn't connect.

Tyler confesses that he threw the fight in order to pay gambling debts, but he was never told that anyone would be killed and reveals that Serena, the redhead who tricked Kevin into leaving his post, paid him to take a dive.

He reveals everything he has learned to Kevin, who confesses that the trip to Norfolk was to test the AirGuard missile defense system, which Powell's company was backing.

He deduces that the sniper, a known Palestinian terrorist named Tarik Ben Rabat, assassinated Kirkland over the Pentagon's large-scale defense cooperation with and weapons systems transfers to Israel.

He kills his underlings Serena and Zeitz (the man who signaled Tyler to go down) in order to prevent their further involvement and then conceals their bodies, aided by his bodyguards.

[14] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "C+" on scale of A+ to F.[15] De Palma himself responded to the criticisms in an interview with Mark Cousins, "There's a lot of discussion in Snake Eyes about why do we reveal who did it so soon.