A retired rock star, Johnny Boz, is stabbed to death with an ice pick during sex by a mysterious blonde woman at his apartment. Homicide detective Nick Curran investigates, and the only suspect is Catherine Tramell, Boz's bisexual girlfriend and a crime novelist who has written a novel that mirrors the crime. It is concluded that Catherine herself did it or someone who is trying to frame her out of spite. Tramell is uncooperative and taunting in the investigation, smoking in the interrogation room and exposing her bare genitalia in front of the officers. She presents alibis and passes a lie detector test. Nick discovers that Catherine has a habit of befriending murderers, including her girlfriend Roxy, who is later shown to have murdered several young boys on impulse, and Hazel Dobkins, who murdered her family.
Le célèbre détective belge Hercule Poirot prend l'Orient-Express pour rentrer d’Istanbul à Londres. Mais alors que le train se retrouve bloqué par la neige dans les montagnes yougoslaves, Samuel Ratchett, un riche Américain, est assassiné. À la demande de son ami M. Bouc, directeur de la ligne, Poirot se met à enquêter pour découvrir le meurtrier parmi les passagers.
Rozat "Rusty" Sabich (Ford) is a prosecutor and the right-hand man of District Attorney Raymond Horgan (Dennehy). When his colleague, Carolyn Polhemus (Scacchi), is found raped and murdered in her apartment, Raymond insists that Rusty take charge of the investigation. The election for District Attorney is approaching and Tommy Molto (Joe Grifasi), the acting head of the homicide division, has left to join the rival campaign of Nico Della Guardia (Tom Mardirosian).
The film opens with newsreel footage, including the farewell address in 1961 of outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning about the build-up of the "military-industrial complex". This is followed by a summary of John F. Kennedy's years as president, emphasizing the events that, in Stone's thesis, would lead to his assassination. This builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison subsequently learns about potential links to the assassination in New Orleans. Garrison and his team investigate several possible conspirators, including private pilot David Ferrie, but are forced to let them go after their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is killed by Jack Ruby, and Garrison closes the investigation.
United States Secret Service Agents Frank Horrigan and Al D'Andrea meet with members of a counterfeiting group at a marina. The group's leader, Mendoza, tells Horrigan that he has identified D'Andrea as an undercover agent, and forces him to prove his loyalty by putting a gun to D'Andrea's head and pulling the trigger. Horrigan shoots Mendoza's men, identifies himself as an agent, and arrests the counterfeiter.
A joint mission of the American FBI and the Russian MVD leads to the death of the younger brother of an Azerbaijani mobster (David Hayman). In retaliation, the mobster hires an enigmatic assassin known only by the pseudonym "The Jackal" (Bruce Willis) to kill an unseen target. The Jackal demands $70 million for the job, to which the mobster reluctantly agrees. Meanwhile, the MVD capture one of the mafia's henchmen. During interrogation by torture, the henchman reveals the name "Jackal". This, coupled with the documents recovered from the henchman's briefcase, leads the FBI and MVD to assume the target for the retaliatory hit is FBI Director Donald Brown (John Cunningham).
In 1975, three children, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, are playing on the streets of Boston when a stranger approaches them. Since the stranger has a badge and is wearing a suit, the children assume that he is a police officer. The stranger orders Dave to enter his car, and Dave obeys, but this leads to him being sexually abused and locked inside a basement for four days, after which he manages to escape.
U.S. President Henry Ashton (Hurt) attends a political summit in Salamanca, Spain, to promote an international treaty. Displayed with eight differing viewpoints, an assassination attempt on the president occurs, relayed in a time span of 23 minutes. Each time the events unfold from the beginning, a new vantage point is shown revealing additional details, which ultimately completes the story of what actually took place during the incident.
In the small fishing town of Nightmute, Alaska, 17-year-old Kay Connell (Crystal Lowe) is found murdered. LAPD detectives Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) are sent to assist the local police with their investigation, at the request of police chief Nyback (Paul Dooley), an old colleague of Will's. Also, an intense Internal Affairs investigation in Los Angeles is about to put Dormer under the microscope. Eckhart reveals that Internal Affairs has offered him an immunity deal in exchange for his testimony regarding one of Dormer's past cases. Eckhart says that he has no choice but to accept the deal, to Dormer's frustration.
Corrupt, flamboyant Atlantic City police detective Rick Santoro (Nicolas Cage) attends a boxing match at Gilbert Powell's (John Heard) Atlantic City Arena between heavyweight champion Lincoln Tyler (Stan Shaw) and challenger Jose Pacifico Ruiz. He meets up with his best friend since childhood, Kevin Dunne (Gary Sinise), who is a US Navy Commander working with the Department of Defense to escort Defense Secretary Charles Kirkland (Joel Fabiani) and Powell at the fight after a trip to Norfolk, Virginia. As the first round begins, Dunne is distracted by an attractive redhead named Serena (Jayne Heitmeyer) who wears a ruby ring, and leaves his seat, which is then taken by Julia Costello (Carla Gugino), a mysterious woman with platinum blonde hair and a white satin suit.
Martin Vail (Richard Gere) is a Chicago defense attorney who loves the public spotlight and does everything he can to get his high-profile clients acquitted on legal technicalities. One day, he sees a news report about the arrest of Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), a young altar boy from Kentucky with a severe stutter, who is accused of brutally murdering the beloved Archbishop Rushman (Stanley Anderson). Vail jumps at the chance to represent the young man pro bono.
Bob Lee Swagger reluctantly leaves a self-imposed exile from his isolated mountain home at the request of Colonel Isaac Johnson, who appeals to him to help track down an assassin who is planning to shoot the president. Johnson gives him a list of three cities where the President is scheduled to visit and Swagger assesses a site in Philadelphia as the most likely. This turns out to be a set-up; while Swagger is working with Johnson's agents to find the rumored assassin, the Ethiopian archbishop is instead shot while standing next to the president. Swagger is then shot by a police officer but manages to escape. The agents tell the police that Swagger is the shooter and stage a manhunt for the injured sniper. However, he meets a rookie FBI special agent, Nick Memphis, disarms him, and steals his car.
Physical therapist Dian Fossey (Sigourney Weaver) is inspired by the anthropologist Louis Leakey (Iain Cuthbertson) to devote her life to the study of primates. To this end, she writes ceaselessly to him for a job cataloguing and studying the rare mountain gorillas of Africa. With some effort, she manages to convince Leakey of her conviction and devotion to the cause at hand after personally approaching him following a lecture in Louisville, Kentucky, on his part in 1966. Thereafter, Fossey embarks into the Congo, where Leakey and his foundation equip her with the necessary equipment and housing to achieve personal contact with the gorillas, and introduce her to a local animal tracker, Sembagare (John Omirah Miluwi), to assist her in her endeavors. Settling deep in the jungle, Fossey and Sembagare manage to locate a troop of gorillas, but they are ultimately displaced by the events of the Congo Crisis after being forcibly evicted from their research site by Congolese soldiers, who accuse Fossey of being a foreign spy and agitator.
The film opens with archival footage of police raiding gay bars and arresting patrons during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by Dianne Feinstein's November 27, 1978 announcement to the press that Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) and Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) had been assassinated. Milk is seen recording his will throughout the film, nine days (November 18, 1978) before the assassinations. The film then flashes back to New York City in 1970, the eve of Milk's 40th birthday and his first meeting with his much younger lover, Scott Smith (James Franco).
In 1959, the four dead bodies of the Clutter family are discovered on their Kansas farm. While reading The New York Times, Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is riveted by the story and calls The New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn (Bob Balaban) to tell him that he plans to document the tragedy.