The Crime

In a psychiatric facility, an older patient named Adel Al-Nadouri speaks to what he believes is his adult son Hussein, who stands behind the observation glass. latestnetflix.com's take is that Adel reflects on his family's past in the Red Sea port of El Quseir and the legacy left behind by his grandfather.

During the 1970s in El Quseir, Adel's vehicle overturns on a rain-slicked road. Police officers led by Detective Inspector Colonel Amgad Al-Husseini and his assistant Abdul Aziz recover his identification, noting his position as a petroleum engineer and heir to an agency established by his grandfather, Hajj Hussein Al-Nadouri. Placed under hospital restraints because he suffers seizures and claws at his own skin, Adel awakens in agitation, calling out, "Nadia. Where's Nadia?" before leaving the clinic without clearance to return to his agency residence, now watched over by a newly assigned guard named Tawfiq.

Adel telephones his sister Ola in Cairo to confirm that his young son Hussein remains safe with her. The phone call stirs memories of his youth, when he witnessed his mother and her lover kill his father. Following the murder, his grandfather took him to the open water, tossed him from a boat, and commanded, "Swim! No one will get you out." His grandfather taught him to crush weakness and made him repeat, "I won't let anyone beat me and hurt me."

Operating the shipping agency alongside a clandestine narcotics distribution ring inherited from his family, Adel meets an insubordinate smuggler named Shawqi Faghoora in an abandoned building. When Shawqi resists his authority, Adel draws a handgun and forces him to his knees, remarking, "Just like in my grandfather's days. When he'd make you kneel."

Colonel Amgad visits the agency to investigate the road crash and asks about the missing wife Adel had mentioned while delirious. Adel claims Nadia is staying with her father in Cairo. His recollections reveal their volatile marriage: Nadia had manipulated a former partner named Ramzy at a social gathering, dominated her household, and confiscated illicit cocaine that her dependent brother Hisham had failed to smuggle through their commercial shipping channels.

Nadia's father, Ibrahim, arrives at the El Quseir police station to report his daughter missing, telling Amgad, "Adel is a liar and is not a normal person. He could even be behind her disappearance." Interrogated in Ibrahim's presence, Adel insists Nadia frequently departs after domestic disputes. Ibrahim confronts Adel outside the station, threatening to use government connections to strip Adel of custody over young Hussein and send him to the gallows.

That night on the desert highway, a violent collision leaves Ibrahim and his wife burned to death inside their vehicle. A surviving truck driver reports seeing two cars driving aggressively before swerving into his lane. Tawfiq informs Amgad that he saw Nadia's parents depart followed by Hisham, while claiming Adel stayed inside asleep. Later, Tawfiq attempts to blackmail Adel, revealing that he witnessed Adel pursue the parents' vehicle and saw blood smeared across the car door.

Amgad travels to Cairo to question Adel directly at his home, raising Nadia's habits of frequenting nightclubs and potential infidelities. Adel counters, "You mean to say she cheated on me, I hit her and she fled? Or she cheated on me so I killed her and hid her body?" Amgad questions Adel's psychiatrist, Dr. Shukri, regarding childhood trauma and homicidal impulses, but the doctor refuses to breach professional confidentiality. When fishermen pull a mutilated female corpse from the water, Amgad brings Adel to the morgue; Adel inspects the body and declares, "It's not her."

The circumstances of Nadia's disappearance are revealed through Adel's actions. Having hired an operative to photograph Nadia visiting another man, Adel had confronted her in their living room. Nadia mocked him, responding, "It's cheating if we're in love," and vowed to seek a divorce by branding him insane. Adel subdued her, locked her in his car trunk, and transported her to an underground cellar in El Quseir, telling her, "I will do to you what my grandfather did to my mother." In the cellar, Adel used a reel-to-reel recorder to capture her detailing how she learned to manipulate her parents and control her brother.

Tawfiq arranges a clandestine meeting with Amgad to trade information about Adel. Adel ambushes the meeting spot, strikes Amgad unconscious, and confronts Tawfiq for inspecting the residence's upper floor against orders. Adel shoots Tawfiq dead using Amgad's left hand and service firearm. Police authorities subject Amgad to an internal inquiry over Tawfiq's death, though Amgad insists the shoe impressions and ballistic angles demonstrate that an outside assailant staged the shooting.

Adel's partner Hamdan brings rations to Nadia in the basement vault. Nadia offers Hamdan one million pounds, the hidden cocaine, and half her estate if he assists her escape and assassinates Adel and Hisham. Hamdan declines, preserves the recorded offer, and hands the tapes to Adel. Hamdan urges Adel to attend one final maritime drug exchange before postwar trade normalizes.

An anonymous report alerts the police, who raid the shoreline exchange and engage the smugglers in gunfire. Amgad visits Adel at his coastal chalet, noting that superior officers have instructed him to close the files regarding Nadia's disappearance, her parents' road deaths, and Tawfiq's shooting. Adel taunts the detective off the record about divine retribution. Amgad arrests Adel, but headquarters orders his release when no physical evidence connects him to the scenes.

Adel descends into the basement where a weakened Nadia pleads, "Let's forget the past and start over. That can be possible, for Hussein's sake." When Adel attacks her, Nadia breaks free and flees through the corridors until Adel traps her. Hisham enters the cellar, discovers his sister alive in captivity, and chooses to walk away to enter rehabilitation, signing over his corporate power of attorney to Adel and declaring, "I don't know anyone called Nadia."

The police raid Hamdan's storage facility, finding contraband alongside photographs linking him to Adel's grandfather, as well as the audio tapes documenting Nadia's confinement. Meanwhile, Shawqi Faghoora leads an armed assault on Adel's chalet to settle their grudge. Adel commands young Hussein to remain indoors and returns fire against the attackers. Shawqi's men detonate explosives, igniting the entire house.

Adel rushes through the flames and discovers Hussein dead in the debris. Amgad arrives with police reinforcements as Adel rocks the dead child in his arms, whispering, "Hussein's sleeping."

Decades later at the Al Aman psychotherapy hospital, Amgad visits Adel at Ola's urging, encouraging him to seek peace before his life ends. Adel experiences hallucinations of his deceased relatives and Nadia shouting over one another, and he collapses into unconsciousness.

Adel awakens in his hospital room and addresses the attending physician as his son. The doctor responds, "No, I'm not Hussein. I'm Dr. Ahmed," while Ola explains that Hussein died during the chalet fire and exists only in his mind. Adel pretends to accept the correction and bids Amgad farewell. Addressing the empty space, Adel remains locked within his family's cycle of violence as he confides to his imaginary son, "Mr. Amgad is a danger to us. I have to kill him."