Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) is a CIA analyst who quits his job and decides to write his memoir. His wife, Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton) is sleeping with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a US Marshall. Katie decides to divorce Osbourne and downloads all of his personal financial files onto a CD. The CD gets left at Hardbodies, a workout gym, where employees Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) and Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) mistake the CD as important top-secret files. To make some extra money, the two decide to blackmail Osbourne. This decision leads to a comical snowball of events.