À Hawaï, Merle Wye, un lieutenant du service de renseignement de l'armée, tombe amoureux d'une infirmière, Molly Blue, une ancienne camarade d'école. À cause de ses faibles aptitudes au baseball, il est transféré dans l'île de Rotohan, avec la mission de capturer un certain Kobayashi, un Japonais qui vole des denrées "vitales" à l'armée, comme du poisson ou du soda. Après plusieurs tentatives infructueuses, il est sur le point d'être transféré vers un poste encore plus éloigné lorsqu'il découvre par hasard avec Molly, nouvellement affectée à l'hôpital de la base, la cachette du voleur.
Mickey s'engage dans l'armée américaine et se rend au Viêt Nam en bateau durant la guerre. Quelques instants après son arrivée, il est descendu d'une balle dans la tête.
En juin 1940, lors de la retraite de l'armée française, un soldat est à la recherche de son unité. Il découvre la vie à la campagne au cours de cette période.
The film begins and ends on the October 16th, 1999 with 20-year-old Kolia, (Maksim Emelyanov), a Russian army recruit, recording and narrating with a handheld video camera, as young, drunken Russian soldiers taunt, terrorize and finally execute a civilian Chechen couple in front of their teenage daughter Raissa (Zukhra Duishvili). Kolia's story is one of four personal narratives that unfold against the backdrop of the ruins of a village in Chechnya, the flood of civilian refugees from the village, and a family partially reunited. We first meet Kolia as a pot-smoking guitar player in Perm, 2300 kilometers from the Chechen border, where he is taken into custody for possession of drugs and drafted into army service. As a new recruit he undergoes a brutal transformation from an innocent youth into a "dehumanized killing machine." When Kolia's fellow soldiers, kill the Chechnan couple, the couple's nine-year-old son, Hadji (Abdul Khalim Mamutsiev) hides and watches and when it is safe, he is able to carry his infant brother to relative safety. The trauma of his parents' death renders him mute. He is helped along the way to the refugee camp by other Chechen refugees and eventually, he is befriended by Carole (Bérénice Bejo), a French-born, Chechnya-based NGO worker. Carole, who works as a researcher and representative of the Human Rights Committee of the European Union, helps Hadji regain his ability to speak. Hadji's elder sister Raïssa searches for both brothers. Helen (Annette Bening), a Red Cross worker, is interviewed by Carol and places hope in the International response to the Second Chechen War to the centuries-old struggle of the Chechen people. Raissa reunited with her baby brother escapes once again from the village with the help of other Chechen refugees. She has to leave without Hadji against her will because of the Russian federal forces' aerial bombing. Raissa helps Helen at the International Red Cross orphanage. Both Helen and Carole are discouraged when the United Nations Commission of Human Rights report of April 2000 does not declare the situation in Chechnya a humanitarian disaster. Carole delivers her report to the United Nations but soon realizes that not many of the participants are listening. With the help of Carole and Helen Hadji is reunited with his siblings. The film ends at the beginning with Kolia's filming of the attack on Hadji's family.
After university professor Xiao Yuanxi 萧元熙 (Zhao Dan) breaks up with his girlfriend, he finds his maidservant Yu Zhen 余珍 (Qin Yi) an attractive, though unpolished, woman. He decides to transform Yu into his ideal woman. He teaches her modern etiquette and customs, and with his encouragement, Yu develops into an independent-minded modern woman. The two become married.