Sheriff Wade was famously corrupt, violent and racist, disappearing one night in the late 1950s at the same time as $10k of town funds went missing.
The general assumption at the time was Sam's own recently deceased father and then Sheriff's deputy, Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey) ran Wade out of town. Buddy took up the role and ushered in an era of relative probity and is considered a local hero, but not by Sam.
CW: racist language
When Joe heads out to collect the office lunch order he uses the back door and thus narrowly avoids death when a group of assassins con their way inside and slaughter his colleagues.
He calls it in but gets into a panicked state waiting for a safe pickup and things go downhill from there.
CW: crude language and occasional bloody violence
Unsatisfied with this, Tom's colleague Peter Cable (Charles Cioffi) pays their mutual friend and detective John Klute (Donald Sutherland) to investigate.
The only lead is some obscene letters written to a New York call girl Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) that seem out of character. She gave little to the Police so Klute travels to NY and begins to follow her and record her phone calls to get leverage on her.
When a co-worker gets contaminated she is irritated by how poorly treated they are with the incident being played down.
Later after her own contamination scare she gets involved with the local union branch and begins to note down all the lax safety practices.
No good will come of this.
A ragtag group of thieves get wind of a huge staged gladiatorial fight run by one of their old foes. While casing the location they encounter a terrible monster that is being used to guard the loot in an underground cell.
What they need to kill it and steal the prize money is a Witcher.