In 1929, in New York City, Maxwell Perkins is a successful editor at Scribner's and discoverer of great authors such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. He lives in a "cottage"—actually, a mansion—just outside the city with his wife and five daughters. One day, in his office, he reads the drafts of O Lost, a novel by Thomas Wolfe. Struck by the content, Perkins decides to publish it and begins to collaborate with the author. It is eventually published as Look Homeward, Angel and proves to be a commercial success: 15 thousand copies sold in a month. Perkins and Wolfe become best friends, while Wolfe's relationship with Aline Bernstein, a married woman 20 years his senior, is severely tested after the novel's publication. Max manages to publish Wolfe's successful second novel, Of Time and the River, after several years of exhausting revision. Wolfe is in Paris where he follows the events remotely, thanks to news received from Perkins. On his return to New York, he immediately goes to work, writing his new book. His turbulent character leads him to quarrel with Perkins, destroying the relationship between them, resulting in Wolfe turning to another editor. Aline finally leaves Wolfe, because she feels he needs to experience how to be truly alone. After Perkins has reconciled himself with Wolfe's absence, a phone call comes from Wolfe's mother: he has contracted miliary tuberculosis. Despite surgery, Wolfe shows no signs of improving. After a few weeks he dies but before dying he writes a letter to Max, expressing his immense affection for him.

South Florida high school dropouts Ali Willis and Lisa Connelly befriend local deli employees Bobby Kent and Marty Puccio, going out on a double date. Later that evening, in Bobby's parked car, Ali performs oral sex on Bobby, while Lisa and Marty have sex in the back seat. Lisa later learns she is pregnant, but thinks the child is Bobby's instead of Marty's, since Bobby beat Marty unconscious and raped her after. Bobby emotionally and physically abuses Marty, who puts up with his violent tendencies. On one occasion, Bobby rapes Ali while forcing her to watch gay pornography with him. Lisa later tells Marty that everyone suspects Bobby is attracted to him. Marty reveals that the abuse started when they were boys, starting with Marty taking drugs at an early age, which Marty thinks Bobby has been using to take advantage of him. Marty and Bobby later go to a gay bar, where Marty is told to strip down and dance for money, while Bobby takes pleasure in his humiliation. Lisa eventually proposes that the group murder Bobby. Ali recruits her new boyfriend, the pot -smoking and acid -dropping Donny Semenec, and a troubled friend, Heather Swallers, who has recently been released from rehab. Lisa recruits her cousin, the shy and nerdy Derek Dzvirko. They initially plan to kill Bobby with a gun stolen from Lisa's mother. Ali and Lisa lure Bobby to the Everglades, the plan being that Lisa will shoot him while he has sex with Ali, but Lisa finds herself unable to do it. Realizing they need help, the group hires a supposed "hitman" and a friend of Ali's, Derek Kaufman. The group orchestrates a new plan: they drive with Bobby to the Everglades again, and Ali again lures Bobby to the bank of a canal with the promise of sex. Heather haphazardly gives a signal to Donny, who sneaks up behind Bobby and stabs him in the back of the neck. Horrified by the violence, Ali, Heather, and Dzvirko run back to Ali's car. Lisa watches as Marty and Donny repeatedly stab Bobby and slit his throat, before Kaufman bludgeons Bobby with a baseball bat. Kaufman forces Dzvirko to help carry the dying Bobby into the swamp, presuming alligators will consume the corpse. Marty later realizes that he left the sheath to his diving knife at the canal. The group returns to retrieve the sheath and finds Bobby's corpse being devoured by crabs. Lisa, Dzvirko, Ali, and Heather do not believe they did anything wrong, since they did not directly participate in Bobby's actual murder. Lisa decides to dispose of the knife, which is the only evidence linking them to the crime. Unable to maintain the secret, Dzvirko and Lisa reveal to their other friends what they've done, while Ali phones in an anonymous tip to the media, alerting them to Bobby's death. Lisa calls Kaufman and speaks to his younger brother, who says that Kaufman has already been arrested for the murder. Eventually, all the teenagers turn themselves in, except for Marty, who is subsequently arrested. Some time later, the group appears in court, wearing prison jumpsuits, with Lisa visibly pregnant by this time. Marty and Donny begin to argue, leading the others to join in as they each respectively deny their culpability in front of an onlooking courtroom. Title cards reveal the convictions the perpetrators received in real life: Derek Kaufman, Donny Semenec, and Lisa Connelly received life sentences; Ali Willis, 40 years; Derek Dzvirko, 11 years; Heather Swallers, seven years; and Marty Puccio, the death penalty, which was vacated in 1997.

The plot develops in a world where every person emits a specific frequency which determines his or her luck, further determining his or her success in life. Higher frequency means better luck and thus less feelings. In this world where relationship, connections, and life worth is determined by predestined "frequencies", Isaac-Newton Midgeley, known as Zak, is a Low Born who wants to change his fate and start a relationship with High Born savant, Marie-Curie Fortune. Despite his teachers and his parents who tell Zak that Marie and he are opposites which will never attract, Zak attempts throughout his youth to court Marie, with no success. Marie, being of high frequency, is unable to feel emotion; however, her goal is to feel love. Zak's friend, Theo, attempts to help Zak raise his frequency, a feat claimed to be impossible. During his teenage years, Zak uses magnets and other methods to no avail. Upon returning, as a young adult to Marie's birthday, he claims to be able to raise his frequency and eventually manages a kiss from Marie. The two end up spending the night together. Zak discovers with Theo that sound waves, when combined with gibberish two-syllable words, are able to temporarily raise one's frequency. They create a cell phone device which, based on the environment, is able to determine which words can raise one's frequency. However, Zak and Marie discover that the words actually have mind-controlling properties, which may have caused their love. A secret government organization detains Zak and his associates, revealing that this phenomenon had been known throughout history but slowly forgotten. By 1760, this phenomenon had lost much of its power. Unable to contact Theo, Zak uses a word to paralyze his captor and escapes. Zak escapes to Theo's house whose father reveals that music, specifically by Mozart, can balance everyone's frequencies and nullify the mind-controlling properties of these words. Theo is able to calculate an equation based on music and discover that fate exists. He is able to predict the future and destinies of others. Zak and Marie realize their love was caused by fate, not choice. Finding this irrelevant, the two hold hands while Theo realizes the perfect philosophical equation.

In 1944, Dutch Jewish singer Rachel Stein is hiding in the occupied Netherlands. When the farmhouse where she had been hiding is destroyed by an Allied bomber, she goes to see a lawyer named Smaal who had been helping her family. He arranges for her to escape to the liberated southern part of the country. Aided by a man named Van Gein, Rachel is reunited with her family and boards a boat that is to take them and other refugees to the south. They are ambushed by the German SS who kill them and rob valuables from the bodies. Rachel alone survives but does not manage to escape from the occupied territory. Using a non-Jewish alias, Ellis de Vries, Rachel becomes involved with a resistance group in The Hague, under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers and working closely with a doctor, Hans Akkermans. Smaal is in touch with this Resistance cell. When Kuipers's son and other members of the Resistance are captured, Ellis agrees to help by seducing local SD commander Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze. During a party at SD headquarters, Ellis recognises Obersturmführer Günther Franken, Müntze's brutal deputy, as the officer who had overseen the massacre on the boat. She obtains a job at the SD headquarters while falling in love with Müntze who, in contrast to Franken, is not abusive or sadistic. He realises that she is a Jew but does not care. Thanks to a hidden microphone that Ellis plants in Franken's office, the Resistance realises that Van Gein is the traitor who betrayed Rachel, her family, and the other Jews. Against Kuipers's orders, Akkermans decides to abduct Van Gein to expose him. Their attempt goes wrong, and Van Gein is killed. Franken responds by planning to kill 40 hostages, including most of the plotters but Müntze, who realises the war is lost and has been negotiating with the Resistance, countermands the order. Müntze forces Ellis to tell him her story. On her evidence, he confronts Franken with a superior officer, Obergruppenführer Käutner, who orders Franken to open his safe, expecting to find the valuables stolen from the Jews he had killed, this being a capital offense. The safe contains no valuables and Franken then tells Käutner that Müntze has been negotiating with the resistance for a truce. Müntze is imprisoned and condemned to death. The resistance plot to rescue their imprisoned members; Ellis agrees to cooperate only on the condition that they also free Müntze. The plan is betrayed and the rescuers find the prisoners' cells filled with German troops. Only Akkermans and one other man manage to flee. Ellis is arrested and taken to Franken's office. He knows about her and the microphone and, knowing that the resistance members are listening, he stages a confrontation to make them believe that Ellis is the collaborator responsible for the failure of the rescue. Kuipers and his companions swear to make her pay for her treason. Ronnie, a Dutch woman working at the SD headquarters to whom Ellis had confided her role in the resistance, helps her and Müntze escape. When the country is liberated by the Allies, Franken attempts to escape by boat but is killed by Akkermans, who takes the Jewish loot. Suspecting Smaal is the traitor, Müntze and Ellis return to confront him. Smaal states that the identity of the traitor is evidenced by his 'black book', in which he had detailed all his dealings with Jews. He refuses to discuss it further, wanting to go to the Canadian authorities. When they are about to leave, Smaal and his wife are killed by an unknown assailant. Müntze chases him into the street, only to be recognised by the Dutch crowd and arrested by soldiers from the Canadian Army. The Dutch also recognise Ellis and arrest her as a collaborator but not before she grabs the black book. Müntze is brought before the Canadian officers and finds that Käutner is helping to keep order among the defeated German forces. Käutner convinces a Canadian colonel that under military law, the defeated German military retains the right to punish its own soldiers (this is based on the real executions of German deserters). Due to the German death warrant, Müntze is executed by a firing squad. Ellis is imprisoned with accused collaborators, humiliated and tortured by the violently anti-Nazi volunteer jailers but rescued by Akkermans, who is now a colonel in the Dutch Army. Akkermans brings her to his medical office and says that he killed Franken when the Nazi tried to escape. He shows her the valuables stolen from Jewish victims. When informed about Müntze's fate, Ellis goes into shock and Akkermans administers a tranquilliser which is in fact an overdose of insulin. Ellis, feeling dizzy, sees the bottle of insulin and survives by quickly eating a bar of chocolate. She realises then that Akkermans is the traitor who had collaborated with Franken and had killed the Smaals. While Akkermans is distracted, waving to a crowd that cheers him, she jumps from the balcony into the crowd below and runs away. He tries to follow but is blocked by the crowd. Ellis proves her innocence to Canadian military intelligence and the former Resistance leader Gerben Kuipers through Smaal's black book, which lists how many Jews had been taken to Akkermans for medical help just prior to their murder. Ellis and Kuipers intercept the fleeing Akkermans, hiding in a coffin in a hearse with the stolen money, gold, and jewels. They beat the driver, and while Kuipers drives the hearse, Ellis screws down the coffin's secret air vents. They drive to Hollands Diep where the original SS trap had been sprung and wait until Akkermans suffocates. Ellis and Kuipers wonder what to do with the stolen money and jewels. The scene changes to Israel in 1956, reprising the opening scenes and shows Rachel meeting her husband and their two children, walking back into Kibbutz Stein, with a sign at the gate announcing that it was funded with recovered money from Jews killed during the war. In the final scene, the tranquillity of Rachel and her family is interrupted by explosions heard in the distance; the siren announces an air attack and Israeli soldiers position themselves at the front of the kibbutz.

After defeating Owen Shaw and securing pardons for their past crimes, Dominic Toretto, Brian O'Conner, and the team have returned to the US to live normal lives. Dom tries to help Letty Ortiz regain her memory, while Brian accustoms to life as a father. Meanwhile, Owen's elder brother Deckard Shaw vows revenge for the now-comatose Owen. Deckard breaks into the DSS field office in LA to extract profiles of Dom's crew and fights Luke Hobbs and Elena Neves, detonating a bomb that severely injures Hobbs. A letter bomb sent by Deckard, who has killed Han Lue in Tokyo, explodes and destroys the Toretto house. Dom learns about Deckard from Hobbs and travels to Tokyo to retrieve Han's body. At Han's funeral in LA, Dom spots Deckard and chases him by car, but Deckard flees when a covert ops team, led by government agent Mr. Nobody, arrives. Mr. Nobody tells Dom that he will help them in stopping Deckard if Dom helps him retrieve God's Eye, a computer program capable of tracking anyone in the world on a digital network, and save its creator Ramsey from Mose Jakande, a Nigerian terrorist. The team, including Dom, Letty, Brian, Tej Parker and Roman Pearce, airdrops their modified cars over the Caucasus Mountains in Azerbaijan and ambush Jakande's convoy, where they rescue Ramsey and leave for the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi. They steal the flash drive containing the God's Eye chip hidden in a W Motors Lykan HyperSport owned by a billionaire prince. With God's Eye secure, the team uses it to track Deckard, but Deckard, having expected this, has allied with Jakande, who ambushes them. The team is forced to flee while Jakande obtains God's Eye. The team returns to LA. Dom plans to face Deckard, while Letty, Brian, Tej and Roman resolve to protect Ramsey from Jakande. As Jakande uses God's Eye to doggedly pursue the team with a stealth helicopter and an aerial drone, Ramsey attempts to hack into God's Eye. Hobbs leaves the hospital and destroys the drone while Brian hijacks a signal repeater tower that allows Ramsey to remotely shut down God's Eye. Jakande attempts to flee and spots Dom and Deckard in a street brawl atop a public parking garage. Jakande turns on Deckard and attacks both men. Dom uses the distraction to defeat Deckard and crashes his Dodge Charger onto Jakande's helicopter, allowing him to leave a bag of grenades on it. Hobbs shoots the grenades, killing Jakande. Letty tearfully tells an unconscious Dom that she has regained her memories. Dom regains consciousness. Deckard is arrested by Hobbs and locked up in a black site prison. At the end, Dom and the team acknowledge that Brian has happily retired, opting to be with his family in peace, with another baby on the way. As Dom drives and recalls his memories with Brian, the two bid each other farewell.

Irene Vail decides to divorce her husband, the rich ship owner Bruce Vail. However, Bruce learns that he can prevent the divorce if he can provide evidence that she has been involved with another man. He pays his driver Michael to visit Irene's hotel room in Paris and pretend to be her lover so that a private detective can catch them in a compromising position. However, a man overhears Irene's startled cry upon finding Michael in her room, and a struggle ensues when the man defends Irene, leaving Michael on the floor, unconscious. When Bruce and the detective burst into the room, the man threatens them with a gun, demands Irene's jewelry and takes Irene hostage. Once they are away, the intruder, Paul Dumond, returns Irene's jewelry and invites her to dine with him at the Château Bleu restaurant, where he works as a waiter. They dance and Irene falls in love with him. In the morning, Irene returns to find Vail and the police in her room, as Michael is dead. Vail leads her to believe that Paul is responsible for the murder and blackmails her into coming back to the United States with him in exchange for Paul's freedom. Distraught that he is unable to find Irene, Paul learns that Irene has reunited with her husband and left for the U.S. Sensing something is wrong, he embarks for the U.S. to find her, accompanied by Cesare, his good friend and head chef of Château Bleu. In Manhattan, Paul and Cesare rehabilitate a restaurant, hoping that it will attract Irene. The reunion takes place at last, but Paul learns that Michael is dead and that a man has been arrested in Paris for the murder. Unwilling to let an innocent man pay for what he thinks is his crime, Paul embarks for Paris, and Irene joins him. They travel on the liner Princess Irene, which is owned by Vail and named after her. Vail learns that they are on the ship. In a rage, he orders the captain to travel at full speed, despite the danger of collision with an iceberg, claiming a desire to break the record for fastest crossing. Vail actually hopes that the ship will sink, killing Paul and Irene. The ship does strike an iceberg, and premature news reports state that the ship has sunk with tremendous loss of life. Consumed by guilt, Vail commits suicide and confesses to killing Michael in a note. However, the ship's bulkhead doors contain the water and prevent the ship from sinking. Paul, Irene and the other passengers rejoice when they hear that they are to be rescued.

When a body is found hanging on top of the sign demarcating the Ontario – Quebec border, police officers from both Canadian provinces must join forces to solve the murder. David Bouchard is a rule-bending, francophone detective for the Sûreté du Québec, while Martin Ward is a by-the-book anglophone Ontario Provincial Police detective. The bilingual detectives must resolve their professional and cultural differences as well as their bigotry and prejudices. The body is identified as Benoit Brisset, a hockey executive. The clues lead the pair to Luc Therrien at a roadside bar. After a fight in the bar, they imprison him in the trunk of Bouchard's car. Bouchard has promised to watch his daughter Gabrielle's ballet recital, so he drives to the recital and parks the car in front with Therrien still locked in the trunk. When they emerge, they find the car being towed from the no-parking zone, and as they try to chase down the truck driver, the car explodes. With their prime witness dead, they decide to search Therrien's house where they find a large marijuana grow-op in the basement. They also discover another body, a former hockey team owner Grossbut. A laser tripwire is activated by Bouchard, a bomb explodes which sets the house on fire, destroying the house and causing the two cops to get high on the fumes of the burning marijuana. When they are disciplined by Bouchard's police chief Roger Leboeuf shortly afterwards, he angrily removes them from the case after they start laughing hysterically because they're still high. The next victim is discovered in Toronto, the League's first woman agent Martina Flabcheeks. They realize that the killer has a pattern of tattooing his victims, with each tattoo providing a clue to the next murder victim. Each murder is in some way connected to major league hockey. (The film uses thinly disguised parodies of National Hockey League teams, owners and players, however, rather than the real league.) The pair anticipate the next victim Pickleton, but he goes missing before they reach him. Ward and Bouchard appear on a hockey broadcast to warn people in the hockey community to be vigilant. The "Tattoo Killer" calls in to the show and threatens the two police officers, causing a brawl between them and the neurotic anchor Tom Berry when they attempt to hang up. Ward is attacked in his home by a masked assailant whom he discovers is Therrien. Meanwhile, Bouchard has sex with Ward's sister Iris. The "Tattoo Killer" kidnaps Gabrielle in exchange of the League commissioner Harry Buttman, leading to the final confrontation with the two policemen by indeed kidnapped Buttman. It is ultimately revealed that the murders are being committed by a bilingual portly hockey fan, as previously mentioned, under the direction and unequal partnership of a sadistic, psychopathic, sociopathic, fan of the notion of the game of hockey as a Canadian nationalistic symbol that he feels is being permanently corrupted by attempts to move ownership of Canadian teams to venture capitalist groups in the United States. He is therefore having Therrien commit the murders along with him (with the tattoos as a signature), as revenge against the hockey league for desecrating the game by moving Canadian teams such as the "Quebec Fleur de Lys" (a reference to the now-defunct Quebec Nordiques) to the United States. They try to reason with him that hockey is just a game and exchange Therrien who the detectives intercepted tailing them at a conference, for Gabrielle, but this only angers him. The Tattoo Killer executes Therrien and as the two policemen give him Buttman, Ward distracts the man while Bouchard unties Gabrielle. After a fight, the killer is blown up by one of his own explosives that Ward put in his pocket. During the credits, a news report is shown, revealing that Buttman shall make a rule that no hockey teams will be moved.

Walter Burns, a hard-boiled newspaper editor, learns that his ex-wife and former star reporter, Hildy Johnson, is about to marry insurance man Bruce Baldwin and settle down as a housewife in Albany. Walter, determined to sabotage these plans, asks a reluctant Hildy to cover one last story: the pending execution of Earl Williams, who has been convicted of murdering a black policeman. Walter maintains that Williams is innocent and that the city fathers are only going through with the execution so as to curry favor with black voters. Hildy accepts the assignment on the condition that Walter buy a life insurance policy from Bruce. While Hildy works on the story, Walter does everything he can to keep Bruce from taking her to Albany, including framing him for theft (forcing Hildy to bail him out of jail). Exasperated, Hildy quits, but when Williams escapes, her journalistic instincts get the better of her. Walter frames Bruce again, and he is immediately sent back to jail. Williams suddenly appears at the window of the press room where Hildy is working. She hides him in a rolltop desk. Meanwhile, a messenger from the governor arrives at the mayor's office with a reprieve for Williams. The mayor, who is determined to see Williams hanged, bribes the messenger to keep the reprieve under his hat until it is too late. Mrs. Baldwin, Hildy's future mother-in-law, enters the press room, having eluded a kidnapper sent by Walter. She reveals to the assembled crowd (which includes the mayor) that Hildy is keeping Williams in the desk. Williams is taken back to his cell and Walter and Hildy are arrested for abetting his escape. At this point, the messenger returns with the reprieve, telling the mayor that he has decided not to take the bribe after all. Walter uses this information to blackmail the mayor into letting them go. Walter tells Hildy that she is free to go to Albany with Bruce. Hildy is put out by this, realizing that she still loves Walter and is not ready to give up her career as a journalist. Bruce then calls to say he has been arrested again, this time for carrying counterfeit money (that Walter gave him). Hildy is relieved to learn that Walter never had any intention of letting her go quietly. Walter proposes to Hildy for the second time and promises to take her on the honeymoon they never had in Niagara Falls. He then learns that there is a strike in Albany, which is on the way to Niagara Falls. Hildy agrees to honeymoon in Albany, accepting that Walter will never change.

In Passaic, New Jersey, Elroy Fletcher owns the declining "Be Kind Rewind" VHS rental store. The building is condemned as a slum and the officials led by Mr. Baker give him 60 days to upgrade it to the required standards, or they will demolish it to make way for high-end development. Fletcher leaves on a trip with friends to memorialize jazz musician Fats Waller and visit rental store chains to research efficient and modernized ways of running one, leaving his only employee Mike to work alone. Before leaving, Fletcher cautions Mike to keep his conspiracy theorist friend Jerry away from the store. However, Mike misinterprets his warnings on the train window and is left confused. After attempting to sabotage an electrical substation, believing its energy to be melting his brain, Jerry receives a shock which leaves him magnetized. When entering the store the next day, he inadvertently erases all its VHS tapes. Mike discovers the disaster and is further pressed when Fletcher's acquaintance Miss Falewicz wants to rent Ghostbusters. To prevent her from reporting a problem to Fletcher, Mike comes up with an idea: as Miss Falewicz has never seen the movie, he proposes to recreate the film with cheap special effects, using himself and Jerry as the actors and hoping to fool her. They complete the movie just in time when a customer named Jack arrives asking for Rush Hour 2. Mike and Jerry repeat their filming, enlisting the help of a local girl named Alma for some of the parts. She later makes Jerry a remedy that demagnetizes him at the cost of his vomiting and emitting magnetic urine. Word of mouth spreads through Miss Falewicz's nephew Craig and his gang of the inadvertently hilarious results of Mike and Jerry's filming of Ghostbusters, and soon the store is seeing more requests for such movies. Mike, Jerry, and Alma pretend the films came from Sweden to justify long wait times and higher costs for the rental ($20 instead of $1). To meet demand, they enlist the locals to help out in making the movies, using them as actors in their films. When Fletcher returns intent on converting the store to a DVD rental outlet, he recognizes that they are making more money from the "sweded" films than from normal rentals after learning about what happened and joins in with the process. However, the success is put to a halt when government attorney Ms. Lawson arrives with two federal agents. Ms. Lawson insists the "sweded" films are copyright violations. They seize the store's tapes which they destroy with help from a steamroller operator much to the dismay of the locals and seize the assets to pay off the respective studios. As a result, Fletcher gives up hope and reveals to Mike that he made up the connection of Fats Waller to the building. Fletcher is given a week to evacuate it before its demolition. With the help of the locals, Jerry and Alma convince Fletcher and Mike to give one last hurrah and put together a documentary dedicated to the alternate history of Fats Waller. They create Fats Waller Was Born Here. On the day the building is scheduled for demolition, Fletcher invites all the locals to watch the final film and quietly reveals to Miss Falewicz that he gave Mr. Baker permission to go ahead with the demolition plans after the film ends. When Jerry accidentally breaks the store's TV screen trying to raise it for all to see, a nearby DVD store owner loans them his video projector, allowing them to show the movie on a cloth placed in the store's window. Fletcher, Mike, and Jerry depart the store to find a bigger crowd, including the wrecking crew, who have gathered in the street to watch the film through the window and are cheered on.

Con artist Marcus Pendleton has just been released from prison for embezzlement. He has emerged into a world increasingly reliant on computers. He convinces computer programmer Caesar Smith to follow his lifelong dream of hunting moths in the Amazon rainforest. Assuming Caesar's identity (how he does this is not explained in the film), he gains employment at the London offices of an American conglomerate called Tacanco. While Marcus fools executive vice president Carlton Klemper, another Tacanco executive, vice president Willard Gnatpole, is suspicious. As Caesar Smith, Marcus uses the company's computer systems to send claim cheques to himself under various aliases and addresses all over Europe. For his Paris company, the cheques go to 'Claude Debussy' and his cheques to Italy go to 'Gioachino Rossini', both famous (but conveniently dead) composers. He meets and marries Patty, an inept secretary and frustrated flautist. As Caesar, he now has the problem of hiding his hot money. Beating discovery of his fraud by Gnatpole, he and Patty flee to Brazil when Klemper and Gnatpole fly to Rio after Patty invited them. In a twist, it seems that a now-heavily pregnant Patty found the loose change from his foreign visits money and invested it in companies Marcus mumbled about in his sleep, thus making a profit for Tacanco. Patty offers to sell the stock back at a reduced price, repaying the money stolen by her husband. Wanting to have the baby back in England, she has invited Klemper and Gnatpole to 'visit'. She persuades Klemper to rehire Marcus as Taranco's treasurer: the reformed embezzler could easily spot fraud, and would not steal from his own company. Though unhappy about his new legal status, Marcus agrees. The film ends with Marcus conducting an orchestra (one of his dreams) as Gnatpole and Klemper sit in the audience. Patty, still expecting, is the solo flautist. As she finishes her solo, she realizes the baby is on the way, to which a concerned Marcus whispers, "What, now?"

Faced with a demotion due to a drinking problem, Osborne Cox angrily quits his job as a CIA analyst and decides to write a memoir. When he tells his wife Katie, she secretly files for divorce and continues an on-going affair with Harry Pfarrer, a married U.S. Marshal with paranoid tendencies. At the instruction of her lawyer, Katie delivers a digital copy of her husband's financial records and other personal files, unwittingly including a rough draft of Osborne's memoir. The lawyer's assistant copies the files onto a CD-R, which she accidentally leaves on the floor of the locker room at Hardbodies, a local gym. The disc falls into the hands of personal trainer Chad Feldheimer and his co-worker Linda Litzke, who mistakenly believe it contains sensitive government information. Chad and Linda devise a plan to return the disc to Osborne for a reward, as Linda is eager to raise money for her cosmetic surgeries. However, their inept efforts to blackmail Osborne only enrage him. Upon their failure to secure money from Osborne, Chad and Linda try to sell the disc to the Russian embassy, meeting with a Russian government official. Information about the meeting later makes it back to the CIA via a mole inside the Russian embassy. Osborne's increasingly erratic behavior prompts Katie to change the locks on their house and to invite Harry to move in. Meanwhile, Harry is a serial philanderer who incidentally becomes romantically involved with Linda after meeting her on a dating site. Having falsely promised the Russians more files, Linda persuades Chad to sneak into the Cox house to steal files from Osborne's computer. Chad is discovered by Harry, who reflexively kills Chad with his firearm. Harry searches the body for clues, but finds an empty wallet and missing suit tags, a precaution Chad took on Linda's advice. Harry surmises from his lack of identifying features that Chad is a government agent. At CIA headquarters, Osborne's former supervisor Palmer DeBakey Smith and his superior learn that information from Osborne has been given to the Russian embassy. They are perplexed because the information is of no particular importance and the perpetrators' motive is unknown. To avoid involvement from the FBI because of interservice rivalry, the superior orders that Chad's death be covered up. Harry realizes that he is being tailed, and catches and confronts the tail, who admits to being an employee of a divorce lawyer hired by his wife. Depressed, Harry meets with Linda, who is distressed over Chad's disappearance. Harry agrees to help find him, unaware that Chad is the man he killed. Linda returns to the embassy, believing that the Russians have abducted Chad, but they deny this. After they inform her the contents of the CD she has given them are worthless, she convinces the manager of Hardbodies, Ted (who has unrequited feelings for Linda), to help her by sneaking into the Cox household to gather more files. Harry and Linda meet in a park, where Linda reveals the address where Chad went before he disappeared. Harry realizes that Chad is the man he shot and flees, convinced Linda is a spy. When Osborne breaks into Katie's house with a hatchet to retrieve his personal belongings and her valuables, he finds Ted in the basement; Osborne shoots him, chases him into the street, and kills him with the hatchet. At CIA headquarters, Smith relates the events to his superior. A surveilling CIA officer who saw Osborne's highly conspicuous attack intervened and shot him, leaving him comatose with a low chance of survival. Harry has been detained while boarding a flight to Venezuela, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.; the superior orders that Harry be released and allowed to continue to Venezuela, rather than deal with the consequences of bringing him into custody. Linda has been captured, but agrees to keep quiet if they will pay for her surgeries. The superior, bewildered by the litany of events, approves the payment and closes the file.

A recently promoted police inspector, nicknamed "Il Dottore" ("the Doctor", an Italian honorific) kills his mistress, and then covers up his involvement in the crime. He insinuates himself into the investigation, planting clues to steer his subordinate officers toward a series of other suspects, including the woman's gay husband and a student leftist radical. He then exonerates the other suspects and leads the investigators toward himself to prove that he is "above suspicion" and can get away with anything, even while being investigated. His personal neurosis caused by his extreme position of power, and his firm beliefs in the role of authority, eventually drive him to try to accuse himself with every possible evidence. The only witness of his presence at the victim's apartment, the anarchist Antonio Pace, refuses to accuse him to be able to prove the inherent criminal nature of power ("A criminal leading the repression, it is perfect!"). The Doctor eventually desperately confesses to the crime in front of his superiors, in an effort to not subvert the essence of authority, but they all refuse to believe him, forcing him to recant his confession, with the approval of the police commissioner. The interrogation at his home is revealed to be a dream sequence, and when he wakes up the commissioner and other colleagues actually arrive at his place; however, the outcome of their confrontation is not revealed, and the film ends with a quote by Franz Kafka about the paradoxical nature of power.