Observe and Report

Ronnie Barnhardt has a delusional over-inflated view of his life. He is the head of security (i.e. head security guard) at Forest Ridge Mall, a job he feels he and his team can't do properly without carrying firearms. He still lives at home with his continually inebriated mother who is tactless in her discussions with Ronnie despite the two loving each other. One such comment from her is that Ronnie is the reason his father abandoned the family. Ronnie is medically diagnosed as bipolar, which he doesn't believe should have any affect on his life in any way. And he is in love with Brandi, the vacuous ditsy blonde who works at the department store's cosmetics counter, and doesn't realize that he has no real chance with her barring anything extraordinary happening. In his delusion, he doesn't see other things staring him in the face, such as Nell, the weak-ankled clerk at a donut/coffee concession in the mall, being nice to him not only because it is part of her job. What bothers him most about his job is that mall management calls in the city police to deal with anything of a criminal nature, such as what look to be the two chronic current cases of a flasher terrorizing women in the parking lot, and a spate of robberies in mall stores. The police lead on these cases in Detective Harrison, who Ronnie sees as the enemy in that Harrison constantly denigrates his abilities and chastises him for getting in the way of the investigations, especially as Ronnie uses stereotypes to come to his conclusions as to the criminals. A series of incidents may provide Ronnie a clearer picture of the state of his life. He has to figure out a way to prove who he really is as a human.