Quinn McKenna, membre d'un commando de Rangers américains, est témoin du crash d'un vaisseau spatial lors d'une mission de sauvetage d’otages. Il est le seul survivant. Il découvre le casque et l'arme d'un Predator. Poursuivi, il décide de les envoyer par la poste à son domicile, où vit son épouse et son fils autiste, Rory. Ce dernier parvient à utiliser le masque et l'arme du Predator. Il active par ailleurs une balise qui permet à d'autres Predators de le localiser. De son côté, Quinn a été arrêté par de mystérieux mercenaires, aux ordres de Will Traeger pour le Projet Stargazer. Ce dernier fait par ailleurs appel au docteure Casey Bracket, une exo-biologiste. Elle est accueillie dans un immense complexe dans lequel est conservé un Predator. Quant à Quinn, il se retrouve dans un bus avec d'anciens soldats ayant commis de graves délits et dont la plupart souffrent de troubles psychologiques : "Nebraska" Williams, Baxley, Coyle, Lynch et Nettles.
Norbit Albert Rice (Eddie Murphy) and Kate Thomas (Thandie Newton) are best friends as children at a combination Chinese restaurant and orphanage owned by their father figure, Mr. Wong (Eddie Murphy), but are separated when Kate gets adopted. While being bullied by twins on a playground one day, Norbit is saved by a tough, overweight girl named Rasputia Latimore (Eddie Murphy) who scares him into being her boyfriend. Though at first she genuinely likes Norbit and cares about him, going as far as intimidating other kids into letting Norbit play with them – Rasputia's kindness deteriorates as she grows up to be an ignorant, arrogant, vindictive, and mean-spirited woman. She eventually pressures Norbit into marrying her, and bullies, insults, and controls him to make sure that she keeps him all to herself. Norbit is also belittled by Rasputia's older brothers, Big Black Jack (Terry Crews), Blue (Lester 'Rasta' Speight), and Earl (Clifton Powell), working as a bookkeeper at their local construction company. The Latimore brothers also run a "security business" and instill fear in everyone in the town except Mr. Wong, who refuses to sell his establishment to them.
Thirty years after a nuclear apocalypse, Eli (Denzel Washington) travels on foot toward the west coast of the former United States. Along the way he demonstrates uncanny survival and fighting skills, hunting wildlife and swiftly defeating a group of desert bandits who try to ambush him. Searching for water, he arrives in a ramshackle town rebuilt and overseen by Carnegie (Gary Oldman). Carnegie dreams of building more towns and of controlling the people by using the power of a certain book. His henchmen scour the desolate landscape daily in search of it, but to no avail.
Christian Wolff est un génie mathématique et spécialiste de juricomptabilité qui travaille pour une firme comptable en Illinois. Il accepte des contrats de groupes criminels, contrats transmis par téléphone portable (cellulaire) par une femme inconnue, « La Voix ». Dans son enfance, lors d'une visite au Harbor Neuroscience Institute, centre pour enfants atteints de troubles de santé mentale, les parents de Christian reçoivent l'offre de laisser leur enfant sous la responsabilité du directeur, qui propose de trouver les conditions de vie où Christian s'épanouira. Entre-temps, Christian établit un lien avec Justine, troublée et muette. Le père de Christian, un officier militaire américain, rejette la proposition, jugeant que son fils doit surmonter son handicap. Plus tard, la mère quitte la famille parce qu'elle est incapable de supporter plus longuement les comportements excentriques, parfois violents, de Christian ; elle abandonne aussi son deuxième garçon, Braxton. Dans le but de les aider à relever les défis de leur vie adulte, le père engage des spécialistes pour former ses deux fils au combat.
Charles Travis (Bruce Campbell) and Karen Ross (Laura Linney) are testing a communications laser in a remote part of the Congo near a dormant volcano when Charles' friend Jeffrey (Taylor Nichols) discovers an ancient lost city's ruins. When Jeffrey and Charles go to explore it, they are both mysteriously killed. While Karen waits at headquarters, she activates a video feed and sees a destroyed camp with several dead bodies. The camera is then suddenly knocked over by a strange creature, ending the transmission. TraviCom's CEO and Charles' father R.B. Travis (Joe Don Baker) reveals they were really exploring the Congo to find a rare blue diamond that's only found at the volcanic site.
The film begins in late 1999. Tetraplegic forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington) and a patrol cop, Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie), team up to solve a string of murders all connected to a serial killer by his signature: a single shard of bone is removed from each of the victims. Rhyme was paralyzed from the neck down in an earlier accident and is bed-bound and completely reliant on machines and his nurse Thelma (Queen Latifah) to function. He communicates with Amelia via headset as she examines the various crime scenes and collects evidence and reports back to him.
U.S. Army pilot Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal), last aware of being on a mission in Afghanistan, wakes up on a commuter train to Chicago, at 7:40 am. To the world around him – including his traveling partner Christina Warren (Michelle Monaghan) and the bathroom mirror – he appears to be Sean Fentress, a school teacher. As he comes to grips with this revelation, the train explodes, killing everyone aboard.
In 1850 (nine years after the events of the first film), California is voting on whether to join the United States of America as a state. A wild gunman with wooden teeth, Jacob McGivens, attempts to steal some ballots, but Zorro chases after him and recaptures the votes. In their scuffle, McGivens pulls off Zorro's mask. A pair of Pinkerton agents recognize him as Don Alejandro de la Vega. Zorro fashions a makeshift mask from his costume and rides off on his stallion, Tornado, to deliver the votes to the governor. Upon returning to his mansion, Alejandro is greeted by his loving wife, Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Elena believes that Alejandro can now up give his alter ego, but Alejandro is sure that the people will still need him. The next day, after sending their son Joaquin to school, Elena is confronted by the Pinkertons, who disclose their knowledge of Zorro's identity. Soon after, Elena is forced to have Alejandro served with divorce papers.
Hal Larson (Jack Black) is a superficial man whose fixation on the physical beauty of women gets in the way of seeing them for their inner beauty. Hal and his equally shallow friend, Mauricio Wilson (Jason Alexander), spend their nights obnoxiously hitting on beautiful women at nightclubs. Hal's work life is steady, but he is dismayed after being passed over for a long-sought promotion.
Malcolm Turner (Martin Lawrence) has been assigned a desk job in public relations as an FBI agent, since he wants to live with his new wife, Sherry Pierce (Nia Long), during her delivery for the couple's new baby boy. Meanwhile, an incident occurs in Orange County, California, where Malcolm's old friend, Doug Hudson (Kirk B.R. Woller), has been killed while he was going undercover. FBI agent Kevin Keneally (Zachary Levi) is doing surveillance on a former U.S. Army military intelligence specialist named Tom Fuller (Mark Moses), who has since retired and is working for a private corporation called National Agenda Software. The FBI has soon discovered that Tom is developing a computer worm which will create backdoors into the databases of all the branches of the U.S. government. Affected by his friend's death, Malcolm asks FBI chief, Crawford (Dan Lauria), to put him on the case, but Crawford refuses and tells him to stay away for safety analysis. By eavesdropping via the webcam, Malcolm finds out that the FBI is sending one of the agents to infiltrate Fuller's house as a nanny. Giving Sherry the pretext of attending a safety conference in Phoenix, Arizona, Malcolm leaves for Orange County and takes the "Big Momma" costume with him.
Babel focuses on four interrelated sets of situations and characters, and many events are revealed out of sequence. The following plot summary has been simplified and thus does not reflect the exact sequence of the events on screen.
Charlie Simms is a student at an exclusive New England prep school. Unlike most of his peers, Charlie was not born to a wealthy family. To pay for a flight home to Oregon for Christmas, Charlie accepts a temporary job over Thanksgiving weekend looking after retired Army Ranger Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade, whom Charlie discovers to be a cantankerous, blind alcoholic.
En 2005, à Wall Street, au milieu des grandes banques, des médias et du gouvernement aveugles, quatre outsiders découvrent la bulle immobilière et l'opacité de son financement. Par l'analyse et l'enquête sur le terrain ils rejettent l'idéologie et l'optimisme écrasants de leur milieu. Ils sont les seuls à se positionner dans le sens de la débâcle qui leur apparaît certaine.
Dr. Martin Harris and his wife Liz arrive in Berlin for a biotechnology summit. Martin realizes he left his briefcase at the airport and takes a taxi to retrieve it. When they are involved in an accident, the driver, Gina, rescues him and flees the scene, as she is an illegal immigrant. Martin regains consciousness at a hospital after having been in a coma for four days.
At Wellman College, thousands of hamsters overrun the campus, due to the massively obese, yet loving and kind-hearted, professor Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy), who accidentally releases them due to his wide belly always accidentally hitting the button when he turns around. Meanwhile, Sherman has constructed an experimental formula that reconstructs human DNA in a way that allows them to lose weight instantaneously.