NEON

EXTENDED SYNOPSIS (From Pro Coverage)

Act One: The Kill, The Date, The Turn

The film opens with a breathtaking and horrifying set piece: a skydiver in futuristic tactical gear executes California’s junior U.S. Senator, Fred Allworth, during his Malibu wedding. The assassin guns down the groom mid-vows, escapes via speedboat and helicopter, killing the speedboat driver and pilot to eliminate witnesses. It is precise, ruthless, and spectacular.
We then meet Kip Miller, a 30-year-old former minor-league pitcher turned suspended Washington Post journalist turned underground arms dealer, driving his black Porsche through a rainy Maryland night. He’s heading toward a Tinder date with Nia Jolie, a 29-year-old woman whose profile says “Energy Solutions Corp.” Meanwhile, Nia — beautiful, athletic, and haunted — can barely look at herself in the mirror. Her inner voices war over whether she should even go on this date. Identical images line the outside of her right leg from hip to ankle, though we don’t yet know what they are.

The date is electric. Kip and Nia have immediate, crackling chemistry — funny, flirtatious, and layered with subtext. He’s in Prada. She’s in a little black dress. Both are lying about who they really are. A surveillance drone monitors them. But midway through dinner, an unexpected coded audio transmission crackles through Nia’s hidden earpiece. Then a phone call delivers a four-word coded kill order: “Keg. Ice. Lint. Lock.” The letters spell K-I-L-L. Nia’s target is the man sitting across from her.

Instead of executing the order, Nia takes Kip’s Porsche, sweeps it for bugs, ditches her tracking devices in a crude tin-foil Faraday cage, and puts a Glock to his temple while running red lights through the rain. She interrogates him at gunpoint. Kip confesses he’s a suspended journalist and underground arms dealer. Nia confesses she’s OP-29 — CIA Black Ops — and the person who killed Senator Allworth. She chose to spare Kip because her handler, CIA Deputy Director Harry Ash, betrayed her. Their lives are now intertwined. By sunrise, they’ll both be publicly framed as Allworth’s assassins.

Act Two: Alliance, Revelation, Siege

In a rain-soaked parking lot, Nia plays Kip the coded transmission she intercepted. She decodes it: Allworth had proof that FV1 — the deadly fentanyl variant devastating America’s Black communities — was created by the CIA as a targeted bioweapon. Harry Ash is the architect. Detroit, Atlanta, Houston — these are human testing sites with geographic specificity. The CDC Report proving all of this has been suppressed. And “The King” in the coded message refers to a kill order on Texas Senator Zoey King, who has been the loudest voice demanding FV1 accountability.

Kip contacts his former Washington Post editor, Rayfer, who begins investigating from the newsroom. Together, Nia and Kip arm up from Kip’s extensive basement weapons vault (his late father’s military arms business) and begin a desperate operational campaign. They learn Nia’s husband, Xavier “X” Jolie — a fellow OP-29 operative she believed was dead — is alive and hunting them. In a devastating attack on Kip’s house, X and his partner Carr arrive with submachine guns and a flamethrower. Nia freezes when she sees X through the flames, his ankh pendant glimmering. Kip slaps her back to reality and they escape into the woods.

At a motel, Kip extracts a bullet from Nia’s ribcage. She reveals her backstory: born Neon Rainbow Sky to grifter parents in South Dallas, she was driving getaway at 15 when a botched credit union robbery left her parents and two rookie cops dead — she killed the officers. Facing the death penalty or life imprisonment, Harry Ash offered her an “alternative.” Neon “died” of an overdose in prison on her 17th birthday. Nia Jolie was born. Meanwhile, the brands on her right leg are revealed: self- inflicted ankh burns, one for each kill.

Working through Rayfer’s contacts, they rescue Senator Zoey King from her Georgetown home — barging in with Glocks and Kevlar, introducing themselves as “Gaga” and “Bruno.” King is profane, hilarious, queer, fearless, and immediately a force. During a vehicle pursuit, Kip kills X’s partner Carr. In a tense standoff, Nia texts X that she knows he poisoned her and killed their unborn child. X, confronting his own guilt, lets them go.

King provides a safe house near Catholic University. Over the IMac, Nia, Kip, and King piece together the full conspiracy with Rayfer’s team at the Post. Satellite photos confirm CIA assets at the Durango, Mexico lab (Lab Hecho-FV1). King connects the dots to a broader agenda of targeted population control. Through a phone call with Ash, Nia learns her marriage to X was an “arranged” company assignment — designed to manage her, keep her compliant. When she started wanting a baby and her performance slipped, X faked his death and went abroad.

Act Three: Confrontation, Sacrifice, Redemption

Nia orchestrates a daring operation. Kip’s partner Angie Ling — ex-Marine, arms-dealing co-pilot — takes Ash’s family hostage in Charleston to leverage his cooperation. Nia and Ash meet in Saint Paul Chapel on Catholic University’s campus, where Kip records Ash’s video confession. Ash admits FV1 is a “proof of concept” for inner-city population control and surrenders the CDC Report (hard copy and SSD drive). Files are simultaneously sent to Senator King, who uploads everything to the Washington Post.

But X has followed Ash to the chapel. He storms in with an MP5. In the firefight, Ash is killed by combined fire from Nia and Kip. X pursues them through the burning chapel. With the rear doors chained, Kip sends Nia downstairs while he holds the balcony. When Nia’s gun jams, Kip throws her his own weapon and, unarmed, hurls his baseball at X’s face. X’s hearing aids blast out, but X gets the shots off — Kip takes rapid fire to his Kevlar-vested chest and plummets 30 feet from the balcony.

Nia sprints through the snow toward Rayfer’s waiting helicopter. She stops and looks back at the burning chapel — breaking her promise. X pursues relentlessly. Nia takes multiple hits but reaches the chopper. Angie fires from the door, dropping X into the snow. But he’s getting up. Nia, bleeding and broken, forces Rayfer to hover. In a devastating moment of clarity, she fires a final burst: “My love was true. Just like my aim. Marriage — terminated.” X goes down for real. Nia collapses.

Kip, impaled on a pew shard but alive thanks to his Kevlar vest and Nia’s ankh necklace, drags himself through the inferno and escapes in the red VW Beetle. In the aftermath, Senator King leads a massive rally outside CIA headquarters. One hundred Black mothers hold photos of their dead children. Canary yellow whistles on silver chains become the symbol of the movement. The Durango lab is bulldozed. Senate investigations are launched. The CIA claims Ash was “one rogue bad actor” — King makes clear she doesn’t buy it.

Rayfer smuggles Kip across the Canadian border. At Le Mount Stephen hotel in Montreal, Nia — healing, transformed, hair newly colored — delivers the code phrase: “I am the Swamp Rabbit. And I am looking for my mate.” She receives the Swiss bank books Kip promised. In her suite, she faces her mirror reflection for the first time without flinching. When the doorbell rings, her killer instinct reaches for the Glocks — but she drops them both into the trash. She opens the door to Kip, alive, in his Prada suit, carrying an ice bucket with a baseball, carrot sticks, and Budweiser longnecks, playing a Kaytranada remix of John Mayer’s “Neon.” Nia removes the ankh necklace from Kip’s neck and flips it down the hallway. She slips on the canary yellow whistle Senator King sent her. And as they sit together — wounded, wanted, free — Kip asks: “Second date?” Nia grins: “We’ll see, Brody.”