Tesla in a hotel room in 1943 talks to a reporter. He then reminisces about how things would be different if J. P Morgan had listened to him. Tesla arrives in the US in the 1880s. He tries to convince his new employer, Thomas Edison, to adopt his newly invented electric induction motor running on an alternating current (AC) system but Edison claims direct current (DC) is better and turns him down. Robert Underwood Johnson and his wife Katharine, who were at the meeting, later find Tesla digging a ditch, having quit his job at Edison. Tesla strikes a business deal with two investors to finance development of his motor. He shows off his AC system at meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers but Edison, in the audience, claims it is impractical. After the reporters, and even Tesla's own investors, walk away George Westinghouse convinces Tesla to sell him his AC patents and offers a contract to pay Tesla a royalty on his motor design. They end up in a public battle with Edison trying to demonstrate their system is not dangerous (as Edison claims) and is actually better than DC. J.P. Morgan, pulling the strings in the background, calls Tesla and Edison into a meeting and, unhappy with Edison's progress electrifying his factories, tells Tesla he can try to prove AC would work better. At a banquet celebrating the building of an alternating current power plant at Niagara Falls Tesla confuses the audience with his futuristic ideas about his high frequency wireless AC transmission system and then tells someone he is off to Europe to see his family (who he has been having flashbacks about). On that trip he visits his bed-ridden mother who dies in his arms. He then wanders out in the country side having flash backs about his childhood and the death of his brother, all punctuated by visions of falling water and lightning. Westinghouse and Katharine visit Tesla back at his New York lab where the inventor tears up his royalty contract to save Westinghouse from financial ruin. Tesla goes on to develop his wireless power system, making several reports to Morgan on his progress. Morgan tells Tesla he is unhappy with wild stories about the inventor but keeps backing him. Westinghouse warns Tesla (who is now building his Morgan financed Wardenclyffe wireless power station) to watch out for Morgan's motives and Katharine tells the inventor how she wished they could have had more of a relationship together. Tesla learns from Morgan that Guglielmo Marconi has stolen his wireless patents and that Albert Einstein has new theories about matter and energy. Tesla tells Morgan these new theories are a "crime against nature" and tries to get Morgan to back his free wireless power system before it is too late. After Tesla leaves Morgan says he won't back a system that would put him out of business and orders all further interaction with Tesla cut off. Tesla looks over his demolished Wardenclyffe station and complains, at the end of his life in a world choked with smog, that he wished Morgan had listened to him.

Oscar "Manny" Manheim is a bank robber and hero to the convicts of Alaska's Stonehaven Maximum Security Prison. After two previous escape attempts, Manny is put in solitary confinement for three years. A court order compels the cruel Warden Ranken to release him from solitary. Planning a third breakout, Manny is forced to move his plan to midwinter after he is stabbed in the hand. Manny recruits young prisoner Buck McGeehy to help in the plan. The two men escape through a sewer tunnel and hike to a switchyard. They steal railroad clothing and board a train consisting only of four locomotives. The elderly railroad engineer, Al, has a heart attack after starting the train. He attempts to stop it by pulling the conductor's valve before falling dead from the locomotive, but his application of the brakes disables the dead man's switch without cutting the throttle, so the locomotives burn through the brake shoes and keep going. As the unmanned train accelerates, dispatchers Dave Prince and Frank Barstow are alerted to the situation. Barstow allows the train to reach the mainline while trying to keep the tracks farther down the line clear. The runaway smashes the rear flatbed and caboose of a freight train referred to as Eastbound #12 pulling onto a siding. The collision damages the cab of the lead locomotive and jams the front door of the second engine, an older EMD F-unit. Barstow's superior Eddie McDonald orders him to derail the train. The train's horn then blows, alerting the authorities (and the two fugitives) that someone else is aboard the train. Barstow has the maintainer cancel the derailment. Ranken concludes his two escaped convicts are fleeing by rail. Meanwhile, the fugitives are discovered by Sara, a locomotive hostler who explains that she sounded the horn and the train is out of control. The train is going too fast for them to jump and can only be stopped from the lead engine, but the streamlined body of the second engine means that its now-unusable front door is the only way to reach the lead engine. They manage to slow the train by disconnecting the multi-unit cables between the second and third engine, shutting down the rear two locomotives. The dispatchers realize that the main line will take the train through a tight curve near a chemical plant, where its excessive speed would cause a disastrous derailment. Reluctantly, they divert the runaway onto a dead-end branch line, where its derailment would kill only the three on board. Manny tries forcing Buck into a suicidal scramble around the second engine's frozen nose. Sara's intervention on Buck's behalf results in an armed face-off between the convicts. Emotionally broken, all three slump into depression. Ranken arrives in a helicopter and his accomplice is lowered towards the lead engine, but he falls through the second engine's windscreen and then under the train. Spurred on by the appearance of his archenemy, Manny makes a perilous leap to the lead engine. He falls off the train but grabs onto the coupler, which crushes his injured hand before he manages to climb back up. Ranken boards the locomotive from the helicopter and confronts Manny, but Manny beats him and handcuffs him inside the engine. The frightened warden demands that Manny stop the train, but Manny has chosen to join Ranken in death rather than return to prison. When reminded of Buck and Sara in the second engine, Manny uncouples the lead engine from the rest of the train, leaving the other three engines to coast to a stop. He waves goodbye as Buck begs him to reconsider, then climbs onto the roof in the freezing snow, stretching his arms wide to embrace his freedom and incoming death. Buck and Manny's fellow inmates mourn in their cells as the lone engine vanishes into the storm. The film ends with a quote from Shakespeare 's Richard III: "No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast."

Okwe, a doctor in his home country (not initially named) who was forced to flee after being falsely accused of murdering his wife, lives in the United Kingdom as an undocumented immigrant. He drives a cab in London during the day and works at the front desk of a hotel at night, which is staffed by other immigrants, both documented and undocumented. He is pressed to treat other poor immigrants, including fellow cab drivers with venereal diseases, with scarce supplies provided by his friend Guo Yi, an employee at a hospital mortuary. Juliette, a sex worker who regularly conducts her business at the hotel, informs Okwe about a blocked toilet in one of the rooms, and he fishes out a human heart. The manager of the hotel, Juan, runs an illegal operation at the hotel wherein immigrants swap kidneys for forged passports. After learning of Okwe's past as a doctor, Juan pressures him to join his operation as a surgeon, but Okwe refuses. Senay is a Turkish Muslim seeking asylum who also works at the hotel as a cleaner. Her immigration status allows her to stay in the UK, provided she does not work; the hotel is a perfect cover because she is not named on its books. She allows Okwe to sleep on her sofa when she is not home, as she is from a conservative culture where men and women who are not married do not spend the night together under the same roof. After Senay is visited by Immigration Services, who inspect the hotel after finding a book of matches in her flat, Okwe prevents the officials from intercepting her. No longer able to work at the hotel, Senay begins working in a sweatshop making clothes, which is also raided by officials looking for undocumented immigrants, who the manager gets rid of. The manager allows Senay to keep her job and not report her to the authorities in return for her performing oral sex on him; she initially complies before proceeding to bite him. Okwe finds her a place to stay at the hospital mortuary, while Senay asks him to accept Juan's proposition in his organ business to raise money to travel to America. In desperation, Senay offers her kidney to Juan for a passport; Juan accepts the deal on condition he takes her virginity as well. Senay is later provided with a morning-after pill by Juliette. After learning of Senay's plan, Okwe agrees to perform the operation to ensure her safety, but only if Juan provides them both with passports under different names. After Juan delivers the passports, Okwe and Senay drug him, surgically remove his kidney, and sell it to Juan's contact. Okwe plans to use his new identity to return to his young daughter in Nigeria, and Senay plans to start a new life in New York. Before they part at Stansted Airport, they mouth the words "I love you" to each other, and she gives him her cousin's address in New York. Senay boards her plane, and Okwe calls his daughter long-distance to tell her he is finally coming home.

In 1972, Karen Silkwood, a worker at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site (near Crescent, Oklahoma), shares a ramshackle house with two co-workers, her boyfriend Drew Stephens and her lesbian friend Dolly Pelliker. She makes MOX fuel rods for nuclear reactors, where she deals with the threat of exposure to radiation. She has become a union activist, concerned that corporate practices may adversely affect the health of workers. She is also engaged in a conflict with her former common-law husband in an effort to have more time with their three children. Because the plant has ostensibly fallen behind on a major contract – fabricating MOX fuel rods for a breeder reactor at the Hanford Site in Washington state – employees are required to work long hours and weekends of overtime. She believes that managers are falsifying safety reports and cutting corners wherever possible, risking the welfare of the personnel. Karen approaches the union with her concerns and becomes active in lobbying for safeguards. She travels to Washington, D.C. to testify before the Atomic Energy Commission. When Silkwood and other workers become contaminated by radiation, plant officials try to blame her for the incident. When she sees weld sample radiographies of fuel rods being retouched to hide shoddy work, and that records of inadequate safety measures had been altered, she decides to investigate further herself. Complications arise in her personal life when Angela, a funeral parlour beautician, joins the household as Dolly's lover. Unable to deal with Silkwood's obsession with gathering evidence, and suspecting her of infidelities, Drew moves out. On November 13, 1974, once she feels she has gathered sufficient documentation, Silkwood contacts a journalist from The New York Times and arranges a nighttime meeting. She first attends a union meeting, carrying documentation of her findings on her way to meet with the journalist. En route, she sees approaching headlights in her rear-view mirror, which draw so close that they distract and blind her, preventing her from seeing the road ahead, leading to her fatal one-car crash. No documents are found in the wreckage of her car.

The President of the United States is caught making advances on an underage girl inside the Oval Office less than two weeks before the election. Conrad Brean, a top spin doctor, is brought in by presidential aide Winifred Ames to take the public's attention away from the scandal. He decides to construct a fictional war in Albania, hoping that the media will concentrate on this instead. Brean contacts Hollywood producer Stanley Motss to create the war, complete with a theme song and fake film footage of a fleeing orphan to arouse sympathy. The hoax is initially successful, with the president quickly gaining ground in the polls. When the CIA learns of the plot, it sends Agent Charles Young to confront Brean about the hoax. Brean convinces Young that revealing the deception is against his and the CIA's best interests. But when the CIA, in collusion with the president's rival candidate Senator John Neal, reports that the war has ended, the media begins to revert its focus to the president's sexual misconduct scandal. To counter this, Motss invents a hero who was left behind enemy lines in Albania. Inspired by the idea that he was "discarded like an old shoe", Brean and Motss ask the Pentagon to provide a special forces soldier with a matching name (a sergeant named William Schumann is identified), around whom a POW narrative can be constructed. As part of the hoax, folk singer Johnny Dean records a song called "Old Shoe", which is pressed onto a 78-rpm record, prematurely aged so that listeners will think that it was recorded years earlier and sent to the Library of Congress to be "found". Bream and Motss fling pairs of old shoes into a tree outside of the White House grounds. Soon, large numbers of shoes begin appearing on phone and power lines and a grassroots movement to bring home Schumann takes hold, completing a successful astroturfing. When the team goes to retrieve Schumann, they discover that he is actually a criminally insane Army convict. On the return to Andrews Air Force Base, their plane crashes. The team survives and is rescued by a farmer, an illegal alien. However, Schumann is killed when he attempts to rape a gas station owner's daughter. Seizing the opportunity, Motss stages an elaborate military funeral for Schumann, claiming that he died from wounds sustained during his rescue and the farmer receives expedited citizenship for a better story. As the President rallies toward re-election, Motss becomes frustrated that the media are crediting his upsurge in the polls to the bland campaign slogan, "Don't change horses in mid-stream", rather than to Motss's hard work. Despite Brean's offer of an ambassadorship and the dire warning that he is "playing with his life", Motss demands that he receive credit for his production and he threatens to reveal his involvement unless he gets it. Realizing that he has no choice, Brean orders his security staff to kill him. A newscast reports that Motss has died of a heart attack at home, the president has been successfully re-elected and an Albanian terrorist organization has claimed responsibility for a recent bombing, suggesting that the fake war is becoming real.

The plot involves Gurdjieff and his companions' search for truth in a series of dialogues and vignettes, much as in the book. Unlike the book, these result in a definite climax—Gurdjieff's initiation into the mysterious Sarmoung Brotherhood. The film is noteworthy for making public some glimpses of the Gurdjieff movements.

In 2031, 17 years after an attempt to stop climate change via stratospheric aerosol injection with the compound CW-7 catastrophically backfired, creating a new ice age that destroyed life on Earth, the remnants of humanity shelter in a state-of-the-art self-sustaining circumnavigational train, the Snowpiercer, run by reclusive transportation magnate Wilford. The passengers on the train are segregated, with the elite in the extravagant front cars and the poor crammed into squalid tail compartments overseen by armed guards. Urged by his mentor Gilliam, Curtis Everett and his second-in-command, Edgar, lead the tail passengers in a revolt. They discover that the guards have no ammunition and overwhelm them, freeing Namgoong Minsoo, a captive security specialist. For his assistance, they bribe him with Kronole, an addictive drug made from industrial waste. Namgoong also insists that his clairvoyant daughter, Yona, be freed. Curtis and his fellow revolutionaries discover that the protein bars they were being fed were made of dead cockroaches. Namgoong helps the tail mob advance, but they face guards armed with melee weapons and overseen by Minister Mason. Edgar is held hostage, but Curtis allows him to be killed to capture Mason, forcing her to order the remaining guards to surrender. The tail mob stays back, holding the guards captive, while Curtis takes Mason, Namgoong, Yona, skilled fighter Grey, and Tanya and Andrew (two parents who had their children taken from them) towards the front of the train. Curtis's group travels through several opulent cars. Namgoong and Yona recognize a landmark outside and speculate that the ice may be thawing more and more with every passing year. The group reaches a schoolroom, where a teacher is indoctrinating the children on Wilford's greatness. A bald man brings eggs for the children to celebrate the train's eighteenth circumnavigation of the Earth. Then the bald man goes to the tail army and shoots them with automatic firearms hidden under the eggs. The captured guards are freed, as is Mason's henchman, Franco. The teacher, who received a gun from the bald man, kills Andrew before Grey kills her. Franco broadcasts to the classroom his execution of Gilliam, which prompts Curtis to execute Mason in turn. Curtis's group moves on, but Franco catches up with them, killing Grey and Tanya. Franco is then seemingly killed by Curtis and Namgoong. In the last compartment before the engine, Namgoong reveals that he collected the Kronole to use it as an explosive to escape the train with Yona, believing they can now survive outside, pointing out the melting ice. Curtis explains that in the early days of the train, the tail section resorted to cannibalism. Edgar was an infant when Curtis killed his mother, and Curtis was going to eat him when Gilliam offered his severed arm instead, stopping the bloodshed. Curtis wants to confront Wilford for causing such horrors. Wilford's assistant, Claude, emerges from behind the engine room door to invite Curtis inside. Curtis meets Wilford and, to his shock, learns that he and Gilliam conspired to stage Curtis's rebellion to reduce the tail section's population to sustainable levels. After ordering the execution of most of the tail section residents, Wilford offers Curtis his position leading the train. Curtis appears ready to accept as Yona overpowers Claude, rushes in, and asks for a match. In desperation, she pulls open a floorboard to reveal Tanya's son, Timmy, who has been enslaved to work as a replacement for a broken machine part. Appalled, Curtis pummels Wilford and rescues Timmy from the machinery, losing his arm in the process. Andy, Andrew's missing son, crawls out of a nook and climbs into the engine core despite Curtis's pleas. Curtis gives Yona the match to light the fuse for the Kronole bomb, while Namgoong fights and kills Franco, who followed them. Damaged by the fighting, the door to the engine room cannot be closed, forcing Curtis and Namgoong to use their bodies to protect Yona and Timmy from the blast. The explosion triggers an avalanche that derails the train and wrecks it. Curtis and Namgoong are unresponsive, so Yona and Timmy escape the wreckage. They see a polar bear in the distance, indicating that life exists outside the train and has not died out, as they were always led to believe.

In May 1996, several commercial expeditions at the base camp of Mount Everest prepare to climb to the summit. Rob Hall, who popularized commercial Everest missions, leads Adventure Consultants; Scott Fischer is the chief guide for its rival, Mountain Madness. Rob's clients include Beck Weathers, an experienced climber; Doug Hansen, a former mailman pursuing his dream; climbing veteran Yasuko Namba, who hopes to complete her final Seven Summits ascent; and Outside magazine journalist Jon Krakauer. Helen Wilton manages Rob's base camp. A month earlier in New Zealand, Rob says goodbye to his pregnant wife Jan, promising he will be home for the birth. At the base camp, Rob receives a fax from her, informing him that their unborn baby is a girl. He wants to name her Sarah, but she disagrees. Worried about climbers overcrowding, Rob persuades Scott to cooperate to reduce delays. On the summit attempt, Rob's group departs from Camp IV before dawn, planning to complete the ascent and begin descending by 2:00 PM., the latest safe time to ensure return before nightfall. The group is delayed by over an hour after discovering that guide ropes are not installed on the upper reaches of the climb. Beck has eyesight problems and stops. Rob tells him to return to base camp if his condition does not improve in a half-hour. Scott hurries down to camp to help another climber but plans to re-ascend, and Rob warns him about overexertion. Rob reaches the summit on time and is joined by other climbers including Yasuko, who jubilantly plants her Japanese flag. Descending, Rob encounters Doug struggling to ascend just above the Hillary Step and orders him to descend. Doug insists on continuing, saying that he will not get the chance again. Rob reluctantly agrees and they reach the summit two hours later, well past the safe return time. Doug is exhausted and suffering from altitude sickness. With them is Scott, exhausted and ill from high-altitude pulmonary edema. As Rob helps Doug descend, a blizzard strikes while Doug's oxygen tank is empty, causing him to suffer hypoxia. No extra bottles are stored on the route as Rob asked and he radios Helen to send more oxygen. Doug, left briefly by Rob, semi-consciously detaches himself from the guide rope and walks unsteadily along the narrow path, then silently topples to his death. Scott's condition worsens. He tells his fellow climbers to continue descending without him. He lies down and later dies. Descending climbers reach Beck, whose vision remains impaired, but they all become lost as the blizzard obliterates the trail. Three climbers go for help, leaving Beck and Yasuko. Guide Andy 'Harold' Harris reaches Rob with spare oxygen, but the cylinder aperture is frozen shut. They huddle together in the storm. While Rob sleeps, Andy begins to have hallucinations. He then strips off his outer clothing and slides to his death. In the morning, Rob radios Helen that Doug and Andy are gone and that his extremities are frozen. Helen calls Jan, hoping that Rob will respond to her voice. Jan tells him that he must start moving. Rob tells her that he is cold but otherwise comfortable, and asks her to name their baby Sarah, dying soon afterward. Returning climbers tell the camp that Beck and Yasuko are stranded. The weather, however, makes a rescue impossible. Helen calls Beck's wife Peach, informing her of the situation. In the morning, Beck miraculously awakens, sees that Yasuko is dead, and stumbles down to camp alone, severely frostbitten and in need of medical help. Peach calls the American Embassy and organizes a helicopter rescue. Nepal Army pilot Lt. Col. Madan Khatri Chhetri flies a high-altitude mission to take Beck to the hospital. Meanwhile, one of Scott's guides, Anatoli Boukreev, finds his body and moves it off the trail. Returning home, Helen has an emotional reunion with Jan, who later gives birth and names her daughter Sarah. Beck returns to his family, heavily bandaged. Closing titles reveal that he eventually lost both hands and nose to frostbite and that Rob's body (as well as those of the other climbers who died) remains on Everest.

Having come close to a groundbreaking discovery in neurosurgery, the protagonist, Pyotr, decides to abandon his scientific work, his colleague in the experiment, and his best friend, leaving to work as a doctor at an embassy in Sweden. Several years later, dissatisfaction with his job drives him back to Moscow. However, he finds no warm welcome—he is not accepted back into the scientific community, and his best friend refuses to help him despite pleas of Pyotr's wife. Following this rejection, he moves to Siberia. Through various encounters with different people, he gains the courage to overcome his struggles and ultimately returns to his once-abandoned scientific work.

In Gothenburg a gang of five Swedish-Somali teenage boys act out an elaborate scheme for taking the belongings of three teenage boys, in which the gang members play good cop/bad cop which is previewed at the very start of the film with an earlier theft from two different boys. First, they ask the time. When one of the victims checks the time on his mobile phone they claim it looks like one which was stolen from a brother of one of them. The three boys are seeking help in a coffee shop, and the owner offers shelter but does not feel the need to call the police, as requested. The 3 are ultimately intimidated to come along with the 5 to verify this with "the brother". The film is interspersed with scenes of adults traveling in a comfortable, uncrowded train. At one point the conductor announces that a cradle has been found and should be picked up lest it would be removed for safety and fire precautions - the travelers chuckle. When the conductor removes it at one station the station manager brings it back into the train, because the message had merely been announced in Swedish, and is then repeated in English. In the tram, a gang of 3 adults are beating them up, as per a woman, searching for a stolen phone. Two boys get separated from the other six. A man witnesses the scene but does not interfere, but slips a note with his name to one of the boys, saying he would stand witness in trial if need be. Eventually, the one boy offers the other boy to make a call, then calls his mother and leaves a message. It is not her, but the rest of the group calling him back, telling them their location so they reunite. After some moving around, and the boy being forced to play The Entertainer on his clarinet, one boy of the gang wants to quit; the gang questions him and the eldest /leader responds by beating him up in the bus, and kicking him. An older man tries to interfere, but is intimated by one of the boys. None of the adults help the boy even though he is injured. The four remaining gang members proceed with the three boys. The group exits past a building site with large machines and a couple of security guards safeguarding the building site. They walk into meadow at a lake under a tree. The four force the three to participate in a running contest, with one of the three against one of the four, where the group of the winner gets all valuables of all the boys. The two walk along a curved path to the starting point from where they have to run back to the others. The three lose due to a trick of the four: the boy from the group of three thought they had to run along the path, but the other boy ran straight. The 5 argue about the bounty, justifying their share according to the roles one saying "I played good cop" another "I played bad cop". The three are free to go. Without phone to contact their parents and without money for the tram, they travel without a ticket; they do not explain the circumstances to the 2 conductors, get fined 1200 Kronas each and scolded for fare evasion.Later the gang is seen in a restaurant when the mother of one of the other boys calls. They make fun of her and him. Half a year later the father of one of the victims walks in a park with his son and a friend with his son. The victim recognizes the gang member sitting on a bench with the wooden cradle. The father and his friend ask for the phone and pull him when he does not comply. A pregnant female bystander disapproves but is told to stand clear. After the boy forks out the phone, the two adults leave him alone but get confronted by two female witnesses.