Romantic-fiction novelist Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner – Body Heat) discovers that her sister is in grave danger and must make her way from New York to a small hotel in the Colombian town of Cartagena to deliver a mysterious treasure map in order to save her. But when Joan arrives in Colombia she first finds herself being sent in the wrong direction by a mysterious man and then stranded in the midst of a Colombian jungle. Fortunately for her she meets Jack T. Colton (Michael Douglas – The Game), an American working in the jungle who begrudgingly agrees to help her to Cartagena. But when it becomes apparent that they have men on their trail and that she has a treasure map, things change.