No Way Out is a 1987 American neo-noir political action thriller film directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, Will Patton and Sean Young. Howard Duff, George Dzundza, Jason Bernard, Fred Thompson, and Iman appear in supporting roles. The film is based on the 1946 novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing, previously filmed as The Big Clock (1948) and Police Python 357 (1976). Plot In the opening scene of the movie, set in a house in Washington, near the Pentagon, Lt. Cdr. Tom Farrell of the Office of Naval Intelligence is shown being debriefed by 2 other men. He is tired and bloodied. His interrogators press him on how Farrell came to meet the Secretary of Defense David Brice. The story flashes back six months. Farrell attends an inaugural ball, invited by his college buddy Scott Pritchard, who intends to introduce him to his boss, Secretary of Defense David Brice. There, Farrell also meets Susan Atwell, and the two leave together, beginning an affair. Soon after, Brice hires Farrell to act as his eyes and ears within the CIA—the agency's senior figures seem to be hiding possible intelligence failures from Congressional and White House oversight. Sam Hesselman, an old friend of Farrell's who now works as a programmer/analyst in the Pentagon's new computer center, is part of his team under Brice. Atwell and Farrell's affair continues, even after Atwell reveals that she's also Brice's mistress. After Atwell and Farrell return from a romantic weekend, Brice visits her unexpectedly and becomes suspicious that she has another lover. When Atwell tells Brice to leave, he becomes enraged and accidentally pushes her to her death over an upstairs railing. Brice confesses what has happened to Pritchard. He suggests that Atwell's other lover could be conflated with a suspected KGB sleeper agent, code-named "Yuri". For several years, different American intelligence agencies have tried to uncover Yuri within their ranks without success—they and Brice are all convinced Yuri is a myth, designed by the Soviets to sow confusion and mistrust within American ranks. Pritchard argues that Atwell's murder could be spun as a matter of national security, and Yuri could be killed "in the line of duty" by operatives under Pritchard's control, clearing Brice from suspicion. At Atwell's house, Pritchard discovers the negative of a photograph she had earlier taken of Farrell. The negative is blurry and does not show a