On January 18, 1960, Frank Morris (Clint Eastwood) arrives at the maximum security prison Alcatraz, having been sent there after escaping from several other prisons. He is sent in to meet the warden (Patrick McGoohan), who curtly informs him that no one has ever escaped from Alcatraz. Eventually he meets his old friends, bank robber brothers John and Clarence Anglin (Fred Ward and Jack Thibeau), and he makes the acquaintance of the prisoner in the cell next to his, car thief Charley Butts (Larry Hankin). Morris befriends numerous other inmates, including English (Paul Benjamin), a black inmate serving two life sentences for killing two white men in self-defense; the eccentric Litmus (Frank Ronzio) who keeps a pet mouse and calls himself Al Capone, and the elderly artist and chrysanthemum grower Doc (Roberts Blossom).
Set in 1931, two sisters, 14-year-old Molly and 8-year-old Daisy, and their 10-year-old cousin Gracie live in the Western Australian town of Jigalong. The town lies along the northern part of Australia's rabbit-proof fence, which runs for several thousand miles.
The film opens with an image of a wooden toy horse. Gradually we observe that this is an assembly line in a prison, staffed by prisoners. They sing (La liberté, c'est pour les heureux = "Freedom is for the happy") as they work. Close-ups of two prisoners (Louis and Émile, the film's main protagonists) indicate they've taken a work tool. The prisoner next to Louis occasionally looks on, looking somewhat bored. After dinner everyone goes back to their cell. After feigning sleep during a guard's nightly rounds, Louis and Émile sing the title song as they resume a project of sawing off the prison window. Émile cuts himself, and Louis kindly mends the wound with a handkerchief. The window breaks free and they attempt to escape. Louis is able to get over the retaining wall, but Émile is not successful. Louis escapes, accidentally knocks someone off a bicycle, and rides off on the bicycle. Meanwhile we hear a chorus suggesting he's about to be captured (Ce sera bientôt fini = "It'll soon be over"). Louis heads into a village emblazoned with the words "Finishing Line" - the cyclist he knocked over was in a bicycle race, and Louis has won first prize.
During World War II, after the Soviet invasion of Poland, young Polish military officer Janusz Wieszczek (Jim Sturgess) is held as a POW and interrogated by the NKVD. The Soviets, unable to get him to say he is a spy, take into custody his wife from whom they extort a statement condemning him. He is sentenced to 20 years in a Gulag labour camp deep in Siberia.
En 1930, Henri Charrière, surnommé « Papillon Pouce-coupé », » est condamné à perpétuité au bagne en Guyane pour meurtre alors qu'il clame son innocence. Il est d'abord envoyé au bagne de Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni en 1933 (où il rencontre Louis Delga), puis sur l'île Saint-Joseph ou sur l'île du Diable. Papillon n'a alors qu'une idée en tête : l'évasion.
In 1881 in Old Fort Sumner, New Mexico, William H. Bonney, known as Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson), is passing the time with friends shooting chickens for fun. An old friend of Billy's, Pat Garrett (James Coburn), rides into town with Deputy Sheriff J.W. Bell (Matt Clark) and joins the diversion. Later, over drinks, Garrett informs Billy that the electorate want him out of the country, and that in five days, when he becomes Sheriff of Lincoln County, he'll make Billy leave.
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.
Colonel Joseph Ryan (Frank Sinatra) is a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot who is shot down over Italy. He is captured by Italian troops and taken to a POW camp, run by the cruel Blackshirt Major Basilio Battaglia (Adolfo Celi). The camp is mainly populated by British prisoners.
A career bank robber, Jack Foley (George Clooney), and a U.S. Marshal, Karen Sisco (Jennifer Lopez), are forced to share a car trunk during Foley's escape from a Florida prison. After he completes his getaway, Foley is chased by Sisco while he and his friends—right-hand man Buddy (Ving Rhames) and unreliable associate Glenn (Steve Zahn)—work their way north to Bloomfield Hills, a wealthy northern suburb of Detroit. There they plan to pay a visit to shady businessman Ripley (Albert Brooks), who foolishly bragged to them in prison years before about a cache of uncut diamonds hidden in his home.
Paris Pitman has pulled off a $500,000 robbery and is the only one who knows where the money is hidden. He is seen in a bordello and is captured, tried, convicted and sentenced to an Arizona penitentiary.
A cleverly planned escape attempt, which seemed guaranteed to work, ends in disaster: the would-be escapee is caught and killed by sadistic Capitano Benucci (Peter Arne) within seconds of leaving the POW camp. This incident is witnessed by the other prisoners, who notice that Benucci seemed to be waiting for the escapee to arrive before shooting him dead in cold blood.
Ray Breslin is a former prosecutor who co-owns Breslin-Clark, a Los Angeles–based security firm specializing in testing the reliability of maximum security prisons. He spends his life getting into prisons to study their designs and the guards' habits to find and exploit their weaknesses, thus enabling him to escape without a hitch or a victim. His goal is to ensure that criminals sent to prison stay inside by eliminating the weakness of every prison; Breslin's wife and child were murdered by an escaped convict he had successfully prosecuted.
Sir Ernest Pease (James Robertson Justice) is a brilliant but acerbic scientist working on aircraft research during World War II. He needs to take a trip on a bomber to observe the results of his work. At first the plan is to fly in an RAF plane disguised as an RAF officer, but when he is told to shave off his beard he refuses and gets to go as a Royal Navy officer, as beards are allowed in the RN.
Steven Jay Russell (Jim Carrey) is on his deathbed, recalling the events of his life that led him to this point. He spent his early adult years in Virginia Beach as a police officer. He plays the organ at church, has unenthusiastic sex with his wife, Debbie (Leslie Mann), and spends his off hours searching for his biological mother, who placed him for adoption as a child. Steven locates his biological mother, but she rejects him.
At a Prisoner of War (POW) camp for Germans in the north of Scotland, Kapitän zur See Willi Schlüter (Helmut Griem) - a German submariner – challenges the authority of the camp’s embattled Commanding Officer, Major Perry (Ian Hendry). British Army Captain Jack Connor arrives to investigate what's happening at the McKenzie POW Camp.