Desert Saints

Arthur Banks, Kiefer Sutherland, is an Ivy League–educated hitman for Latin American drug cartels who targets solitary women as cover for a kill, then finishes the job. His method is chillingly efficient, marked by a tungsten-core bullet that underscores his clinical approach to life and death. Over the years, the relentless pressure of pursuit by law enforcement has made him wary of surveillance—satellites, cameras, and relentless tracking—so he tends to retreat to remote, arid stretches of the desert when he’s not working. The story follows the high-stakes cat-and-mouse game between Banks and the FBI, a chess match driven by a shared obsession with catching a man who seems to anticipate every move.

The FBI response is spearheaded by Agent George Scanlon, Jamey Sheridan, a veteran whose career was derailed years earlier when Banks killed a witness he guarded, leaving no evidence behind and five years of his life missing from the ledger. In a bid to finally close the case, Scanlon engineers a sting by planting Bennie Harper, Melora Walters, a drifter, directly in Banks’ path. Harper is meant to appear as an easy mark, someone Banks can approach without suspicion, and Banks agrees to what he calls his last job—a hit on a Mexican presidential candidate. The pursuit takes the chase across the Southwest, with Scanlon and a small FBI team, including Agent Donna Marbury, Leslie Stefanson, following Banks and Harper as they move from one lonely outpost to another. But the plan starts to unravel when one of the tailing agents is spotted and captured by Banks, threatening to expose the operation.

In a desperate bid to keep Banks off balance, the agents escalate the ruse by having one of their own impersonate Harper’s jealous and abusive ex-husband. Banks, who appears more drawn to Harper than a typical target, reacts with unsettling calm, killing the impostor in Harper’s sight and disposing of the body in a way that leaves no evidence for the FBI to seize. The sting pivots from a simple arrest to a dangerous power play between hunter and hunted. That night, Banks and Harper become lovers at a remote motel, a fragile alliance that complicates both the mission and their own loyalties. Scanlon, sensing the fragile nature of the alliance, decides to cancel the sting and pull Harper out, but she argues that Banks is their only real lead to the cartel bosses who control the operation, insisting that their best chance to expose the larger network lies with him. On the road together, Banks opens up to Harper about his deep-seated resentment for the line of work, admitting that he hates his job but feels there’s little chance to escape for years to come.

In Mexico, the situation intensifies as Harper takes matters into her own hands. She double-crosses both Banks and the FBI: first shooting Banks to stop him from carrying out the assassination, then killing the hired thugs and taking their key to the payoff. She explains that she plans to walk away with the money, confident that the FBI will be eager to question Banks and leave her with the payoff intact. But Scanlon quickly traces Banks’s whereabouts, and Banks manages to slip away before capture. The chase takes a twist when the FBI tracks a sighting of Harper to a local airport, only to discover that the sighting was a feint—Marbury, the undercover agent, was in disguise. Marbury sheds the disguise in a washroom, allowing Harper to slip through undetected and regain the freedom she earned.

The final act returns to the desert, where the two women, Harper and Marbury, meet and share a quiet, intimate moment as they discuss their newfound wealth. In the distance, Banks’s presence lingers—his boots and a bloody hand left behind in the brush—unseen by the two women. The scene ends with a single shot ringing out in the open desert, leaving Banks’s fate ambiguous and the moral weight of the pursuit unresolved. Throughout, the film maintains a cool, restrained tone that emphasizes the fragility of trust, the lure of money, and the high cost of crossing lines in a game where no one can afford to miss a single move.

A tense, character-driven thriller that blends hard-edged realism with procedural pacing, driven by a stark central relationship between a calculating killer and the undercover agents intent on stopping him.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:35