A retired businesswoman wants to control everything around her, knowing that she only has a little time left before an imminent death due to a medical condition. She decides to craft her own obituary, so she hires a young obituary writer to work with her to ensure her life story is told her way. The businesswoman tries to expand the horizons of her life, and adopts a young kid for mentoring and lands herself a job as a disc jockey. She grows close with the young writer and influences her life.

On a Friday night in Chicago, mobster Johnny Ross briefly meets his brother, Pete, after fleeing the Outfit. The next morning, Lieutenant Frank Bullitt of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD), along with his team, Delgetti and Stanton, are tasked by federal prosecutor Walter Chalmers with guarding Ross over the weekend, until he can be presented as a witness to a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime on Monday morning. The detectives are told he is in a cheap hotel on the Embarcadero. At 1:00 am Sunday, while Stanton is phoning Bullitt to say Chalmers and a friend want to come up, Ross unchains the room door. Two hitmen burst in, shooting Stanton in the leg and Ross in the chest. Chalmers, who has ambitions of public office and needs Ross as his star witness, holds Bullitt responsible. After Ross dies in the hospital, Bullitt sends the body to the morgue as a John Doe to keep the investigation open. An informant states that Ross was in San Francisco because he had stolen millions of dollars from the Outfit. Bullitt also discovers that Ross made a long-distance phone call to a hotel in San Mateo. While driving his Ford Mustang, Bullitt becomes aware he is being followed by a Dodge Charger. He eludes his pursuers, and then turns the tables as he follows the hitmen. An extended chase ensues through the city, ending in an explosion in Brisbane, when the Charger crashes into a gas station, killing the two hitmen. Bullitt and Delgetti are confronted by their superior, Captain Sam Bennett. Chalmers (who is assisted by SFPD Captain Baker) serves them a writ of habeas corpus, forcing Bullitt to reveal that Ross has died. Bennett ignores the writ because it is Sunday; this allows Bullitt to investigate the lead of the long-distance phone call to San Mateo. With his car damaged from the chase, Bullitt gets a ride from his architect girlfriend, Cathy. The two then find a woman garroted in her hotel room. Cathy confronts Bullitt about his work, saying, "You're living in a sewer, Frank." She wonders, "What will happen to us in time?" Bullitt and Delgetti examine the victim's luggage and discover a travel brochure for Rome, as well as traveler's checks made out to an Albert and Dorothy Renick. Bullitt requests their passport applications from Chicago. Bullitt, Bennett, Chalmers, and Baker gather around the telecopier as the applications arrive. Chalmers turns out to have sent Bullitt to guard a Doppelgänger, Albert Renick, a used-car salesman from Chicago, while his wife Dorothy was staying in San Mateo. Bullitt realizes that Ross was playing the politically-ambitious Chalmers by using Renick as a decoy so he could slip out of the country Sunday night. Delgetti and Bullitt watch the Rome gate at San Francisco International Airport, but Bullitt realizes the real Ross (on Renick's passport) probably switched to an earlier London flight, which is ordered to return to the terminal. Bullitt chases a fleeing Ross back to the crowded passenger terminal, where Ross guns down a deputy sheriff before being shot dead by Bullitt. Chalmers arrives to survey the scene, but leaves, saying nothing. Early Monday morning, Bullitt arrives home to find Cathy asleep in his bed, having chosen to stay. He places his gun on a banister to make it easier to wash his face. As he washes, he looks at himself in the mirror. The last moment of the film cuts away from showing his face in the mirror to a closeup of his gun resting on the banister outside the bathroom with the sound of running water from the faucet.

The movie deals with the main character, Elling, a man in his 40s with generalized anxiety, and his struggle to function normally in society. He has anxiety, dizziness, and neurotic tendencies, which prevent him from living on his own. Elling has lived with his mother his entire life, and when she dies, the authorities take him from the house where he has always lived and send him to an institution. His roommate is the simple-minded, sex-obsessed Kjell Bjarne. The Norwegian government pays for the two to move into an apartment in Oslo, where every day is a challenge as they must prove they can get out into the real world and lead relatively normal lives. With the help of social worker Frank and a few new friends, they learn to break free from their respective conditions. Elling eventually discovers a new vocation as a rebel poet, while Kjell befriends a pregnant woman with a drinking problem, which eventually turns into a romance. The film ends with both men as firm friends, embarking on new lives filled with hope.