When a popular VIP is assassinated there is public outrage. A historian has unearthed a 400 year-old law that makes clear the assassin must be executed. This generates media heat, and an unpopular government, only seven weeks from an election, sanctions the execution to win public favor. They decide to privatize it. Hugo is a prison governor beset with crises; career, money & marital. He is passed over for promotion, his much younger boss wants him out and his wife's spending is pushing him towards bankruptcy. The American company operating the prison is granted the tender for the execution and Hugo is given the task by an area manager who wants Hugo to fail. Maurice is a conman who has intermittently spent almost thirty years in Hugo's prison - they know each other well. Maurice has a proposal - a way to solve Hugo's money worries; secretly setting up an offshore company to market the TV rights to the execution. Hugo becomes desperate enough to agree. The execution which soon beco