SILVER CITY begins with "Hail to the Chief"-backed opening credits, then a legend across the screen, "Richard Pilager cares about Colorado." Called “Dicky” by his pals, the conservative political candidate (Chris Cooper) is filming an ad with a script that has him saying, "I've always turned to nature to sort things out in my mind, make sense of the world." But filming stops when Dicky’s fishing line snags a dead body. Pilager's campaign manager Chuck (Richard Dreyfuss) hires investigator Danny O'Brien (Danny Houston) to see if one of Pilager's three most likely enemies had something to do with the body. Danny's investigation takes him to a mine safety expert whose career was destroyed by Pilager (Ralph Waite), illegal immigrant workers, left-wing reporters who keep databases of the web of connections between politicians and wealthy executives, and Pilager's bitter and angry sister, a woman who is overly fond of marijuana and archery, and Danny's own ex-girlfriend (Maria Bello), a reporter now engaged to a lobbyist.