Ali (Amit Sial) is a photographer and bike messenger who lives in New York. He develops a friendship and falls in love with a married woman, Saloni Oberoi (Mahima Chaudhry). When her husband, Harry Oberoi (Vikram Chatwal), is killed during the September 11 attacks, Harry's father, a retired Colonel (Anupam Kher), begins to take his aggressions out on Ali for being a Muslim. Although Mrs. Oberoi (Suhasini Mulay) tries to stop the Colonel's behavior, the situation escalates as the Colonel, himself, becomes the target of social post-9/11 aggression directed towards him because he is a Sikh.
New York begins in the United States in 2008, with the arrest by the FBI of Omar Aijaz (Neil Nitin Mukesh) after guns were found in the trunk of a taxi cab he owned. Omar, a young Muslim man originally from Delhi, is then taken into custody and interrogated by FBI Agent Roshan (Irrfan Khan) (also a Muslim man originally from South Asia who has been living in the United States for twenty years). Omar then discovers that he was set up by the FBI in order to force him to spy on a former college friend, Samir Shaikh (John Abraham), whom he hasn't seen in seven years and who the FBI believes is a terrorist. In the process, Omar discovers that Sam has married Maya (Katrina Kaif) (a mutual friend whom Omar had a crush on in university) and finds out that Samir and Maya have a young son, Danyal (Aidan Wagner).
In 2011, Anse Rainier (Gary Richardson), an American professor at Lahore University, is kidnapped soon after he leaves a movie theatre. A ransom video is sent to the US embassy, demanding the release of 690 detainees from a Muslim concentration camp in Kot Lakhpat and €700,000 for the children of Waziristan. Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber), an American journalist and undercover CIA informant in Pakistan, arranges to interview a colleague of Rainer, Changez Khan (Riz Ahmed), who he suspects is involved in the kidnapping.
The film starts with a brief pre-title clip from presenter Greg Palast’s aborted interview with Florida Director of Elections Clayton Roberts, who walks out.
In May 1969, Lou Jean Poplin (Goldie Hawn) visits her husband Clovis Michael Poplin (William Atherton) to tell him that their son will soon be placed in the care of foster parents. Even though he is four months away from release from the Beauford H. Jester Prison Farm in Texas, she forces him to escape to assist her in retrieving her child. They hitch a ride from the prison with an elderly couple, but when Texas Department of Public Safety Patrolman Maxwell Slide (Michael Sacks) stops the car, they take the car and run.
The film focuses on the basic facts of the rescue of hostages held when hijackers belonging to a splinter group of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine under the orders of Wadie Haddad boarded and hijacked an Air France plane. It recounts the events and response of the Israeli government and the controversy that the rescue stirred.
In July 1976, Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris via Athens was hijacked by four terrorists, two of whom are West Germans named Wilfried Boese (Klaus Kinski) and Halima (Sybil Danning), and the other two are Palestinians. After landing to refuel in Libya, the four hijackers force the plane to take off and to land thousands of miles away at the airport in Entebbe, Uganda, at the invitation of the Ugandan leader Idi Amin (Mark Heath). The two Germans and two Arab hijackers are joined at the Entebbe Airport by at least three more Palestinian terrorists. The Jewish passengers are separated and held hostage in demand to release many terrorists held in Israeli prisons. After much debate, the Israeli government sent an elite commando unit, under the command of Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu (Yehoram Gaon), to raid the airfield and release the hostages. The film is based on fact and follows the events following the flight's takeoff until the hostages' return to Israel.
The film tells the story of Nazneen, who grew up in rural Bangladesh, in the district of Mymensingh. At 17 she has an arranged marriage to Chanu Ahmed, who is twice her age. They soon move to Brick Lane in London, the centre of the British Bangladeshi community. She leaves behind her sister and her family home.
A joint operation between American and Russian Special Forces leads to the capture of General Ivan Radek (Jürgen Prochnow), the dictator of a rogue terrorist regime in Kazakhstan that had possession of stolen Soviet nuclear weapons. Three weeks later, President of the United States James Marshall (Harrison Ford) is invited to Moscow for a diplomatic dinner, during which he praises the capture and insists the United States will never negotiate with terrorists. Marshall and his entourage, including his wife Grace (Wendy Crewson) and daughter Alice (Liesel Matthews), and several of his Cabinet and advisers, prepare to return to the United States on Air Force One. In addition, a number of press corps have been invited aboard.