"Pumpkin" (Tim Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda Plummer) are having breakfast in a diner, and discussing their life as robbers. They decide to rob the restaurant after realizing they could make money off the customers as well as the business, as they did during their previous heist. Moments after they initiate the hold-up, the scene breaks off and the title credits roll.
During a lunchtime tryst in Phoenix, Arizona, a real estate secretary named Marion Crane discusses with her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, how they cannot afford to get married because of Sam's debts. After lunch, Marion returns to work, where a client drops off a $40,000 cash payment on a property. Her boss asks her to deposit the money in the bank, and she asks if she can take the rest of the afternoon off. Returning home, she begins to pack for an unplanned trip, deciding to steal the money and give it to Sam in Fairvale, California. She is seen by her boss on her way out of town, which makes her nervous. During the trip, she pulls over on the side of the road and falls asleep, only to be awakened by a state patrol officer. He is suspicious about her nervous behavior but allows her to drive on. Shaken by the encounter, Marion stops at an automobile dealership and trades in her Ford Mainline, with its Arizona license plates, for a Ford Custom 300 that has California tags. Her transaction is all for naught - the highway patrolman sees her at the car dealership and witnesses her purchase of the newer car.
In 1963 Oregon, Randle Patrick "Mac" McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a recidivist anti-authoritarian criminal serving a short sentence on a prison farm for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old girl, is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Although he does not show any overt signs of mental illness, he hopes to avoid hard labor and serve the rest of his sentence in a more relaxed hospital environment.
In an unnamed American city, soon-to-be-retiring Detective William R. Somerset (Freeman) is partnered with short-tempered-but-idealistic Detective David Mills (Pitt), who recently transferred to the department. Together, their first case leads them to believe that they are chasing a serial killer whose killings each reflect one of the seven deadly sins. First, they discover an obese man who was tied to a chair and forced to eat food, and eventually, his own vomit, until his stomach exploded (representing gluttony). Next, they investigate the fatal bloodletting of a rich attorney, from whom a pound of flesh has been extracted (representing greed). Two days later, fingerprints left at the crime scenes lead them to an apartment, where they find an emaciated man strapped to a bed. Though he initially appears to be dead, they find he has been kept alive and immobile by the killer for one year to that day; a drug dealer and child molester before his capture (representing sloth). Though unable to learn anything from the insensate man, the detectives agree the killer has planned these crimes for more than a year.
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is pulled from her training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia by Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit. He assigns her to interview Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer, whose insight might prove useful in the pursuit of a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill", who skins his female victims' corpses.
After a rooftop chase, where his acrophobia and vertigo result in the death of a policeman, San Francisco detective John "Scottie" Ferguson retires. Scottie tries to conquer his fear, but his friend and ex-fiancée Midge Wood suggests another severe emotional shock may be the only cure.
Ramanujam Iyengar, also known as Ambi, is an orthodox Brahmin and a straightforward consumer protection advocate living in Chennai. He expects everyone to follow the laws and prosecutes those who flout them. However, his efforts fail as circumstantial evidence always seems to favour the accused. He also fails to raise civic awareness due to pervasive corruption and a general lack of seriousness. Frustrated at his inability to bring about a change in society, his suppressed anger manifests itself in an alter-ego named "Anniyan", a grim reaper-themed serial killer who punishes corrupt and indifferent people. Anniyan creates a website, compiles a list of wrongdoers from his site, and kills them using punishments described in the Garuda Purana, one of the ancient Hindu scriptures.
Jack Torrance arrives at the mountain isolated Overlook Hotel, 25 miles from the closest town, Sidewinder, Colorado, interviewing for the position of winter caretaker, planning to use the hotel's solitude to write. The hotel, built on the site of a Native American burial ground, becomes snowed-in during the winter; it is closed from October to May. Manager Stuart Ullman warns Jack that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, developed cabin fever and killed his family and himself. In Boulder, Jack's son, Danny Torrance, while brushing his teeth, has a terrifying premonition about the hotel, viewing a cascade of blood emerging from an elevator door, before falling in trance. Jack's wife, Wendy, tells a doctor that Danny has an imaginary friend named Tony, and that Jack has given up drinking because he dislocated Danny's shoulder following a binge.
Sybil is a shy, unassuming substitute grade school teacher. After suffering a small breakdown in front of her students, she is given a neurological examination by Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, a psychiatrist. Sybil admits to having blackouts and fears they are getting worse. Dr. Wilbur theorizes that the incidents are a kind of hysteria, all related to a deeper problem. She asks Sybil to return at a later date for more counseling.
In 1954, two U.S. Marshals - Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule - travel to the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island located in Boston Harbor as part of an investigation into the disappearance of patient Rachel Solando, incarcerated for drowning her three children. The sole clue is a note left by Solando, which reads: "The law of 4; who is 67?" Shortly after arrival, a storm prevents their return to the mainland for several days. Daniels finds the staff confrontational: the lead psychiatrist, Dr. John Cawley, refuses to hand over records of the hospital staff; Solando's doctor, Dr. Lester Sheehan, had left on vacation after her disappearance, and they are barred from searching Ward C and told that the lighthouse on the island has already been searched, so there is no need to search it. When a patient is being interrogated by Daniels, with a subterfuge she sends Aule away for a few seconds and scribbles "RUN" in Daniels' notepad.
In 1947, John Nash (Crowe) arrives at Princeton University. He is co-recipient, with Martin Hansen (Lucas), of the prestigious Carnegie Scholarship for mathematics. At a reception, he meets a group of other promising math and science graduate students, Richard Sol (Goldberg), Ainsley (Jason Gray-Stanford), and Bender (Rapp). He also meets his roommate Charles Herman (Bettany), a literature student.
On Christmas Eve, New York City Police Detective Lieutenant John McClane arrives in Los Angeles to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly. McClane is driven to the Nakatomi Plaza building for a company Christmas party by Argyle. While McClane changes clothes, the party is disrupted by the arrival of Hans Gruber and his heavily armed group: Karl, Franco, Tony, Theo, Alexander, Marco, Kristoff, Eddie, Uli, Heinrich, Fritz, and James. The group seize the tower and secure those inside as hostages, except for McClane, who manages to slip away.
L'histoire se déroule en 1981, à Gotham City. Arthur Fleck travaille dans une agence de clowns. Méprisé et incompris par ceux qui lui font face, il mène une morne vie en marge de la société et habite dans un immeuble miteux avec sa mère Penny. Un soir, il se fait agresser dans le métro par trois hommes alcoolisés qui le brutalisent, le poussant à les tuer en retour. Son geste inspire à une partie de la population l'idée de s'en prendre eux aussi aux puissants ; Arthur bascule peu à peu dans la folie et finit par devenir le Joker, un dangereux tueur psychopathe victime d'hallucinations.
Twenty-year-old Will Hunting (Damon) of South Boston is a self-taught, genius-level intellect with an eidetic memory, though he works simply as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and spends his free time drinking with his friends, Chuckie (Affleck), Billy (Cole Hauser) and Morgan (Casey Affleck). When Professor Gerald Lambeau (Skarsgård) posts a difficult problem taken from algebraic graph theory as a challenge for his graduate students, Will solves the problem anonymously, stunning both the graduate students and Lambeau himself. As a challenge to the unknown genius, Lambeau posts an even more difficult problem and chances upon Will solving it. Fearing he will lose his sole means of (a meager) income, Will flees and skips going into work the next day. That night, Will meets Skylar (Driver), a British orphan about to graduate from Harvard, who plans on attending medical school at Stanford.