本片把中央情报局创始人之一的爱德华·威尔逊波澜壮阔的人生搬上银幕。 爱德华·威尔森(马特·达蒙Matt Damon 饰)因童年的悲剧在心底根植入荣誉的情愫。1939年,正在耶鲁大学就读的他被秘密社团“骷髅会”看中,将他招募为会员,随即他又加入了二战期间的战略情报局。威尔森成为了情报局的核心成员和创建者。然而,长期的尔虞我诈让他多疑的天性与日俱增,在冷战的进程中,威尔森青年时期的最初理想已经被消磨的面目全非。而职业惯性已经把威尔森推离了正常的生活轨道,他与妻子玛格丽特(安吉丽娜·朱莉Angelina Jolie 饰)之间的矛盾日益加深,两人的婚姻名存实亡。为了国家,威尔森不但牺牲了个人理想,连家庭和亲情也因他的蜕变而陷入绝境......Laconic and self-contained, Edward Wilson heads CIA covert operations during the Bay of Pigs. The agency suspects that Castro was tipped, so Wilson looks for the leak. As he investigates, he recalls, in a series of flashbacks, his father's death, student days at Yale (poetry; Skull and Bones), recruitment into the fledgling OSS, truncated affairs, a shotgun marriage, cutting his teeth on spy craft in London, distance from his son, the emergence of the Cold War, and relationships with agency, British, and Soviet counterparts. We watch his idealism give way to something else: disclosing the nature of that something else is at the heart of the film's narration as he closes in on the leak.