Clint Eastwood's new film is the true story of how the FBI destroyed the lives of Richard Jewell and his mother after the 1996 bombing at Centennial Park in Atlanta during the summer Olympics.  Jewell was a security guard at the park who noticed an unattended backpack under a bench.  He alerted other police on the scene, who determined that it was indeed a bomb.  Jewell and the other police immediately began moving people away from the scene.  The bomb did explode; two people were killed and many were injured, but Jewell's actions saved many lives.

For a few days, he was a hero, but then the FBI began to focus on Jewell as the perpetrator because he "fit the profile."  He lived with his mother, wanted to be a policeman, and had lost several security jobs for various reasons, including once for impersonating a police officer.  That is all they had, all they needed — not a shred of real evidence beyond their conviction that he must be guilty because he fit the profile.