‘Backtrace’ (2018) is an exciting movie about two men – a police detective and a criminal. After a bank robbery, Donovan “Mac” MacDonald (Matthew Modine) and his friends were sold by the men he was supposed to be associating with. Mac’s friends are killed, and Mac has a head injury that leaves him an amnesiac.
Seven years later, Mac is visited by a mysterious man named Lucas (Ryan Guzman), who promises Mac freedom by exchanging money in a bank account. Meanwhile, Detective Sykes (Sylvester Stallone), Mac’s chief investigator, often visits him in hopes of learning who killed Mac’s friends. As Mac escapes from the prison, his enemies come back to find him and destroy him permanently. Now, know about Backtrace.
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Backtrace: Synopsis
As the “Backtrace” movie begins, Mac, Ike Foster, and John Truby leave City Central Bank with $ 20 million. They meet two men in the yard, who insist that Mac and his friends withdraw all the money. Predictably, Mac’s team refuses and tells the other two that they will receive only $ 5 million. A brutal shooting ensues, in which Foster and Truby are killed, and Mac is wounded in the head, leading to a complete amnesiac.
We learn that Mac did not even remember to walk or talk when he was first admitted to a psychiatric institution. Over the next few years, with the help of extensive medical care, he was able to walk, talk, and experience other aspects of his personality. However, his memories kept running away from him.
Seven years later, Mac finds himself sitting on a man named Lucas promising to get him out of the facility. Mac does not want to believe this until he is drugged and released from prison without a name seven years ago. Lucas apparently has two partners: Erin and Farren. They both re-entered the center as nurses and security guards, respectively.
Mac thinks he has seen Lucas somewhere but at first doesn’t remember where it was. His obvious rescuers told him about the over-the-counter drug, an LPT enhancer that had just completed its testing. More than 80% of patients who took the drug also experienced 40% memory. When Mac logically asks what happened to the other 20%, Erin reveals that they are dead. Luckily for Mac, although he has to endure great pain and moments of seeing the hall, his memories start to come back to haunt him.
Meanwhile, Sykes and his colleague, Detective Carter (Colin Egglesfield), have been linked to the case from the beginning. Over the years, Sykes regularly visited Mac’s center to see if he remembered anything. With Mac’s disappearance, police began a search operation with Sykes in charge. FBI Agent Franks (Christopher McDonald) will soon join the hunt with his new colleague Karl Hicks.
Backtrace Ending, Explained: What Happened At The End?
When Mac first met Lucas, the latter pretended to be a volunteer prisoner at the center. As mentioned earlier, Erin has become a part of the medical profession, and Farren is posing as a security guard. At first, they seem to be ordinary criminals who are trying to recover from the millions of dollars stolen by Mac and his friends and will do whatever they can to get money. But as his memories begin to fade, Mac realizes that this is not the case.
Mac recalls hiding the remaining $ 15 million in the closed cement factory where he worked and took Lucas, Erin, and Farren there. When Carter appears in the area, Mac mistakenly thinks they are trapped people, as they were part of the law as well, and he falls down because of the effects of the drug. That’s when Erin reassures him that everything will be fine, and Mac’s memories come back quickly. Erin is his wife, and Lucas and Farren are his sons.
As Erin explains, they never told him before because of what happened during the drug case. People who did not recall their memories thought that what they were remembering was false and invested. They did not believe them. Erin, who seems to have been a medical researcher and probably a drug developer, knew that this was the only way the process would work.
The agent, Franks, and his FBI agents set up the Mac. Mac, Foster, and Truby were local people. They all worked in the cement industry mentioned above. Its owners have issued a $ 30 million debt line to Central City Bank, using the employee pension fund as collateral.
They eventually applied for a resignation, but before that, they had secured more than $ 24 million in annual bonuses. These devastated workers like Mac and his friends. Franks knew about it as the FBI was investigating Central City Bank for fraud at the time. He and his colleagues worked with Mac and his associates in the judiciary, providing them with information from the legal profession.
However, Franks did not intend to let Mac and his friends have their share of the money. He did not even want them to live. Although Mac, Foster, and Truby found out about the fraudulent FBI tactics, they were not like the people who spent their lives in law. As a result, Foster and Truby were shot dead during the shooting.
The only reason Mac survived the reunion was that the agents had to leave. They probably thought he was going to die soon. But they did not know him even after he learned that he was alive. This may have been because they had read about his amnesia again and thought that it would draw unnecessary attention if they were to follow him to a safe place.
That changes when the Mac runs. He is also a victim of poaching and is being investigated for the remaining amount of money. During a cement factory collision, the FBI shot Carter and Farren. Franks and his men are very close to killing Mac, Lucas, and Erin. However, Sykes arrives on time and removes the Franks and others, saving the remaining MacDonald family.
As Sykes is on his way to the cement factory, he overhears a conversation between Mac and Franks over Carter’s phone. Sykes and Carter were talking at the time of the shooting, but the call could not be disconnected. Sykes learned well about what happened seven years ago.
After firing the Franks and other corrupt agents, Sykes sees Mac and his family and decides to release them. He believes Mac has already paid his debt for the seven years he spent at the center. Now, he and his family deserve some happiness. That’s why Sykes allows Mac to save money and promises to take care of Farren’s body and any future legal questions about the matter. “Backtrace.”
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