Well, here's my take on The Foreigner plot.
First of all, it helps if you keep a few things in mind. One of them is Xeo's interpretation about the CIA and how corrupt it is and how it corrupts others (thanks, Xeo!) - but that's sort of the "big picture" - it's a given that the CIA is a dirty bunch. Another thing to remember might be my interpretation: "Truth is a commodity afforded only by those who are willing to pay the highest price."
It also helps to keep in mind the paradox: "Everything I tell you is a lie".
Okay, now for the players. Jared Olyphant, CIA, also an associate of the (late) ambassador to Poland, Jackson Cole. Alexander Marquet - well, we're not quite sure what he is, so I've tagged him as an "information broker". Marquet's pet "specialist" is Dunois. You also have to remember what Dunois says at the very beginning of the film - "My assignment is to eliminate any source of knowledge." Jerome Van Aken, German industrialist, and his wife Meredith. And, of course, Jonathon Cold, ex-CIA agent and now agent-for hire.
Various other minor players - Mr. Mimms, Richard, the Danes, Jon's brother Sean - we'll deal with them as they come up.
The plot's actually very simple. We have the CIA complicit with a German industrialist who is manufacturing biochemical weapons. The head engineer of the manufacturing plants decides to expose the operation, but is stopped when the plane he's on is destroyed in mid-air by what is reported as a terrorist attack.
The "package" is the black box of the plane that went down somewhere between Germany and Greece with the biochemical engineer on it. By itself, it's not enough to point the finger at the CIA as the source of the missile that destroyed the plane - but also included in the package are photographs showing Olyphant scooping up the flight recorder, and keys to a house owned by the engineer, where more evidence is stored.
The evidence is damning; both Van Aken (the industrialist) and the CIA (Jared Olyphant) want this destroyed. However, there is someone else interested in the evidence, and that is Meredith Van Aken. She wants the evidence, not to expose her husband's operations to the world, but as insurance, so that she can get away from him with their daughter.
Dunois is actually working for *her* all the way throughout the film - making him a triple agent - actually working for Meredith, he also seems to be working for both Marquet and Van Aken.
Remember his words - his "job" is to eliminate any source of knowledge.
Enter Jonathon Cold. What do we know about him? His (late) father was the ambassador to Poland, and who also had Olyphant as an associate (there's some question as to whether Jackson Cold died of natural causes or not. Just because Olyphant says he did makes one immediately think that maybe he didn't.) Jon also has some evidence about some misdeed of Olyphant's from the past that caused Olyphant to take the opportunity, when it presented itself, to let Cold rot in a Soviet prison.
Cold, as an ex-CIA agent, is now an agent for hire, working for Marquet. He's also a conspiracy theorist, which does seem to cloud his judgement somewhat, and he also is susceptible, unfortunately, to helping the (apparently) helpless. He also seems to have "ethics" although they don't include being worried about how many people he has to kill in order to achieve his objective.
Once Olyphant finds out that Cold is the one Marquet hires to deliver the package, he realizes his association with Van Aken could be exposed. He knows Cold won't just deliver the package - if he finds out what's in it, he (Cold) will use it to destroy the little biochem weapons empire Olyphant and Van Aken have built. So he sends Mr. Mimms (obviously an independent contractor, not CIA) to kill Cold. When that fails, he tries to use Jon's brother as bait, but that fails as well.
Dunois, meanwhile, is also trying to kill Cold and get the package for his employer. He fails in this endeavour, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He was the one behind the Danes' ambush in Versailles; Meredith was the one who called him to tell him where Cold was in the old building. Cold suspects Dunois was behind the Versailles debacle, but completely misses the obvious at the old building when he meets Meredith there, thinking that Dunois got there because Van Aken's phones were tapped.
Van Aken tries to convince Cold his wife is slightly nuts - here "bird with a broken wing" approach that seems to have worked very well on Cold, but Van Aken is such a rat ******* himself, Cold isn't buying it. (Van Aken, as it turns out, is right in his assessment of his wife.) Van Aken makes a call - to the Danes! - he knows where his wife is, and arranges to have her killed (and if Cold is there, that's all to the good, since he's seen what's in the package and is a threat to his security).
Dunois solves Meredith's problem by killing Van Aken.
Cold arrives in Norway, in time to save her from being killed by the Danes.
Back in Paris, Meredith is still using Cold as a protector, but she's still got her own agenda. She's seems lukewarm to the idea that evidence against her husband could still be collected. She arranges a disappearing act, and sends Dunois to kill Cold. Except Cold kills Dunois.
In the end, Cold realises he's been had. And what about the truth? All the evidence has been destroyed, and anyone who could be held accountable has been eliminated.
The thing to remember about The Foreigner is that while it looks like Olyphant and Marquet and Van Aken are in control, it's actually Meredith who's been pulling all the strings all along. Richard's line about "Deception begets deception begets deception" is actually very telling. (Oh, yeah, Cold was wrong about him - he thought Richard was Meredith's agent, when in fact he really was Van Aken's agent.)
Oh, a footnote: if you pause on the newspaper articles about the plane crash, read the articles - they're absolutely hilarious. One is about a gardening program on BBC2, the other is about badly brought up children. I mean, they didn't even *try* to write a news story about a plane crash.
Tora....
