A chance encounter with an old friend destroys attorney Robert Dean's (Will Smith) fast-track career and happy home life when he is framed for a murder by a corrupt intelligence official. As an administrator within the N.S.A., Thomas Brian Reynolds (Jon Voigt) appropriates the vast resources of his department to commit the perfect crime and conceal a political cover up of immense proportions. Dean's only hope to reclaim his life and prove his innocence is a man he's never met, a mysterious underground information broker and ex- intelligence operative and ex-intelligence operative known only as Brill (Gene Hackman).

Hans Zimmer's musical story begins in England, where he was educated. After teaming up with Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes in the Buggles to create "Video Killed the Radio Star," he became a pioneer in the use of digital synthesizers

With his unique combination of electronic and classical music, Zimmer caught the ear of the late film composer Stanley Myers; the two set up shop with Lillie Yard Studio in London and went to work on a number of films, including "My Beautiful Laundrette", which won a Best Picture Evening Standard Award. In 1986, Zimmer worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto and David Byrne to produce the soundtrack for the award-winning epic "The Last Emperor". His subsequent score for "A World Apart", a small film about South Africa, became a turning point. From that project, Barry Levinson hired him to compose the score for "Rain Man".

When he arrived in Los Angeles in 1988 to work on that film, Zimmer thought he'd be in town for a couple of weeks and would then promptly return to his home in London. However, as it sometimes happens in Tinsel Town, success got in the way. After Zimmer received his Oscar nomination for "Rain Man", Hollywood's top directors took notice and the list of films with "Music by Hans Zimmer" in the credits began to expand dramatically. He went on to score the music for "Driving Miss Daisy", "Black Rain", "Bird on a Wire", "Days of Thunder", "Backdraft", "Thelma and Louise", "A League of Their Own", "True Romance" and many others.

He scored big time with "The Lion King", which earned him not only the Academy Award but the Golden Globe for Best Original Score, two Grammys, the American Music Award for Best Album of the Year and the Chicago Film Critics Award for Best Score.