Carol Hunnicut (Anne Archer) goes out on a blind date set up by her friend, in a hotel restaurant in Los Angeles with Michael Tarlow (J. T. Walsh), a lawyer about whom she knows very little. When Tarlow receives a message during dinner to call a client, she accompanies him to his hotel suite while he makes the call. While she is in the bathroom in the suite, the client, gangster Leo Watts (Harris Yulin), arrives in person with one of his hit men, Jack Wootton (Nigel Bennett). Watts accuses Tarlow of stealing money from him. After a fearful Tarlow admits that he did, Wootton shoots him to death. Carol witnesses Tarlow's admission that he stole the money and the murder itself from an adjacent room, but Watts and Wootton do not detect her. After they leave, she waits for almost an hour before fleeing the scene. Fearing for her life, Carol does not report the murder to the authorities.
Finbar McBride, a quiet, withdrawn, unmarried man with achondroplastic dwarfism, has a deep love of railroads. He works in a Hoboken model train hobby shop owned by his elderly and similarly taciturn friend Henry Styles. Because he feels ostracized by a public that tends to view him as peculiar due to his size, Fin keeps to himself.
Under mysterious circumstances, Blanche DuBois, an aging highschool teacher, leaves her home in Auriol, Mississippi to travel to New Orleans to live with her sister, Stella Kowalski. She arrives on the train and boards a streetcar named "Desire" and reaches her sister's home in the French Quarter where she discovers that her sister and brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, live in a cramped and dilapidated two-room apartment in an old New Orleans tenement. Blanche and Stella are all that remain of an old aristocratic family. Blanche discloses that the family estate, Belle Reve, has been lost to creditors, and that she wants to stay with Stella and Stanley for a while. Blanche seems lost and broke, with nowhere to go. Stella welcomes her with an open heart.
At a college pre-med student fraternity New Year's Eve party, a reluctant Alana Maxwell is coerced into participating in a prank: she lures the shy and awkward pledge Kenny Hampson into a darkened room on the promise of a sexual liaison. However some other students have placed a woman's corpse in the bed. Kenny is traumatised by the prank and is sent to a psychiatric hospital.
The story follows the escape of two men from an Alaska prison, the efforts of a railroad dispatch office to safely stop the out-of-control train they are on, and the hunt by their warden to recapture them. Oscar "Manny" Manheim is a ruthless bank robber and hero to the convicts of Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. After two previous escape attempts the doors to Manny's cell have been welded shut for three years. A court order compels Manny's nemesis, the vindictive and sadistic Associate Warden Ranken, to release him back into the general prison population. Manny intends to break out a third time with his older brother Jonah Manheim, but is forced to set his escape plan into action in the middle of winter. Ranken employs a serial killer to give Manny the incentive, by stabbing him grievously through his left hand. Jonah fatally stabs the serial killer to death in retaliation, and in turn is severely beaten by the prison guard, leaving him in a high-security hospital wing.
Milan (Hallyday) arrives in a small town by train at the start of the week. The hotel is closed, but he finds accommodation via a chance meeting with a retired French teacher, Manesquier (Rochefort). The film tells the story of the developing relationship between these apparent opposites, though looming in the background are two unavoidable events that each is expecting to take place on the Saturday - Manesquier is to undergo a major operation, and Milan (though he keeps this secret at first) is to lead a bank robbery. Manesquier soon realises Milan's intentions, but this does not prevent a growing mutual respect, with each envying the other's lifestyle.
Amateur tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) wants to divorce his vulgar and promiscuous wife Miriam (Laura Elliott), so he can marry the elegant Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), the daughter of a senator, and hopefully have a career in politics. On a train Haines accidentally meets Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), who recognizes Guy. Bruno tells Guy about his idea for the perfect murders: Bruno will kill Miriam, and in exchange Guy will kill Bruno's father. They have no identifiable motive for the crimes, and therefore they will not be suspects. Guy hurriedly leaves, but Bruno feels he has agreed. Bruno pockets Guy's monogrammed cigarette lighter.
In 1944, art masterpieces stolen by the Wehrmacht from French museums are being shipped to Germany; the officer in charge of the operation, Colonel Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield), is an ardent art lover and is determined to take the art to Germany, no matter the cost. After the Germans remove the art chosen by Waldheim from the Jeu de Paume Museum, curator Mademoiselle Villard (Suzanne Flon) seeks help from the French Resistance. Given the imminent liberation of Paris by the Allies, they need only delay the train for a few days—still, it is a dangerous operation and it must be done in such a way that does not risk damaging the priceless cargo.
Huey Walker (Dennis Hopper), a hippie and a former New Left radical (in the vein of Abbie Hoffman) who has been on the run from the law for 20 years for something he did not do, disconnecting Spiro Agnew's train car in Spokane, Washington. John Buckner (Kiefer Sutherland) is an FBI agent who is set to transport Walker back to Spokane for trial.
The film starts on June 16, 1994 with Jesse meeting Céline on a train from Budapest and striking up a conversation with her. Jesse is going to Vienna to catch a flight back to the United States, whereas Céline is returning to university in Paris after visiting her grandmother. When they reach Vienna, Jesse convinces Céline to disembark with him, saying that 10 or 20 years down the road, she might not be happy with her marriage and might wonder how her life would have been different if she had picked another guy, and this is a chance to realize that he himself is not that different from the rest; in his words, he is "the same boring, unmotivated guy." Jesse has to catch a flight early in the morning and does not have enough money to rent a room for the night, so they decide to roam around in Vienna.
An American couple, Roy (Woody Harrelson) and Jessie (Emily Mortimer), take the train from Beijing to Moscow as an adventurous side trip on their return home from a Christian mission in China. The gregarious Roy befriends their cabin mates, a Spanish man, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega), travelling with his young Seattle-born girlfriend, Abby (Kate Mara). The reserved Jessie does not share her husband's warmth towards the globe trotting pair. In course of the journey, Carlos shows Jessie a collection of "rare" souvenir matryoshka dolls he is carrying.
The film portrays two conflicts that take place around Flagstone, a fictional town in the American Old West: a land battle related to construction of a railroad, and a mission of vengeance against a cold-blooded killer. A struggle exists for Sweetwater, a piece of land near Flagstone containing the region's only water source. The land was bought by Brett McBain (Frank Wolff), who foresaw that the railroad would have to pass through that area to provide water for the steam locomotives. When crippled railroad tycoon Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti) learns of this, he sends his hired gun Frank (Henry Fonda) to intimidate McBain to move off the land, but Frank instead kills McBain and his three children, planting evidence to frame the bandit Cheyenne (Jason Robards). It appears the land has no owner; however, a former prostitute (Claudia Cardinale) arrives from New Orleans, revealing she is Jill McBain, Brett's new wife and the owner of the land.
In the 1890s, a group of "Harvey Girls" - new waitresses for Fred Harvey's pioneering chain of Harvey House restaurants - travels on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) to the western town of Sandrock, Arizona. On the trip they meet Susan Bradley (Judy Garland), who travels to the same town to marry the man whose beautiful letters she received when she answered a "lonely-hearts" ad. Unfortunately, when she arrives, the man turns out to be an "old coot" who does not at all meet her expectations – and he also wants not to get married as much as she wants not to marry him, so they agree to call it off. When she learns that someone else, the owner of the local saloon, Ned Trent (John Hodiak), wrote the letters as a joke, she confronts him and tells him off, in the process endearing herself to him.
Journaliste sportif, Yvan est marié à Charlotte, une comédienne célèbre. Beaucoup l'estiment chanceux, mais un jour quelqu'un lui fait remarquer que de nombreux acteurs embrassent sa femme, et qu'une foule de spectateurs la déshabillent du regard à chaque film... Yvan devient jaloux.
Willy, nicknamed El Casper, is a member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang and lives in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico. He introduces a young boy into his gang, and the boy is given the nickname Smiley after a violent initiation. Casper later helps Smiley to complete this initiation by helping him execute a rival gang-member. Casper is romantically involved with a girl, Martha Marlen. Fearing for the girl's safety, he keeps the relationship a secret from his gang, but his double life causes his gang to doubt his loyalty. When Martha follows Casper to a gathering of his gang, the gang leader, Lil Mago, escorts her out, despite Casper's misgivings. Mago attempts to rape Martha and accidentally kills her. Later, he blithely tells Casper that he will find another.