Thirteen years after the events of the first film, BOPE Lieutenant Colonel (formerly Captain) Nascimento is ambushed while leaving a hospital. While his car is sprayed with bullets, his voiceover narrates the events leading to that point. Four years prior, Nascimento arrives at Bangu Penitentiary Complex to quell a riot started by gangleader Beirada. Diogo Fraga, a teacher and human rights activist married to Nascimento's ex-wife Rosane, was sent to negotiate for a peaceful surrender. Fraga is escorted to the place and convinces Beirada to release the hostages, but Nascimento's protégé, Captain André Matias, shoots Beirada against Nascimento's orders, which results in multiple inmate deaths. Nascimento learns that PMERJ commander Formoso plans to dismiss him due to the bad publicity and confronts him in a restaurant, only to be cheered by other diners for his tough line. Rio de Janeiro 's State Secretary for Public Safety Guaracy seizes the opportunity and promotes Nascimento as undersecretary, but transfers Matias back to the PMERJ as a scapegoat. Despite Nascimento's promises to help him, Matias speaks to journalist Clara Vidal about corruption in the government and lack of support to BOPE, leading to a month of jail and his estrangement from Nascimento. Meanwhile, Fraga is elected to Rio's State Assembly. Through his new commanding position, Nascimento is able to expand BOPE's arsenal and personnel, granting it armored vehicles and a helicopter, which enables the force to eliminate entire drug cartels from favelas, in hope it will reduce police corruption. However, the absence of drug dealing as a controlling parallel power in these areas leads corrupt PMERJ Major Rocha and his men to form a police militia, ultimately taking over the community by extorting the inhabitants while also building a political machine, with support from the State Governor, Guaracy and Fortunato, a former television host now elected Representative for Rio. Four years later, Rocha's militia has nearly taken over all of Western Rio. Disguised militiamen steal rifles from a police station in Tanque, one of the last drug dealing strongholds, providing their corrupt allies an excuse to authorize a police operation to expel the drug dealers (consequently clearing the way for the militia to take over). Nascimento listens to phonetaps of dealers and assures Guaracy they are uninvolved; however, corrupt Lieutenant-Colonel Fabio Barbosa claims an informant has implicated them and the raid is authorized. Matias, returned to BOPE by Rocha, occupies the station and ambushes the fleeing dealers, torturing captured drugleader Pepa to learn where the stolen weapons are. As Rocha arrives and inexplicably shoots Pepa, Matias confronts him, but is shot and killed by Rocha's men. Devastated by Matias' death and aware Fraga has been investigating the militia, Nascimento taps his phone. Vidal, also investigating, enters one of Rocha's favelas and finds the Governor's re-election campaign material. She phones Fraga but is caught by Rocha's group, who kill her and her photographer. Nascimento listens to the call, realizes Fraga is now a target, takes the recording and goes after him; as he waits outside Fraga's building, Fraga, Rafael and Rosane arrive and are attacked in a drive-by shooting. Nascimento shoots the assailant, but Rafael is wounded. They take him to the hospital and Nascimento hands the recording to Fraga, whereupon he detains and assaults Guaracy, threatening to kill everyone involved if his son dies. The Assembly opens an investigation into the journalists' disappearances based on the recording delivered by Fraga. However, Nascimento is accused of tapping Fraga's phone to spy on Rosane, forcing his resignation. Believing his militia will be scapegoats, Rocha attempts to ambush him after a visit to Rafael; however, Nascimento, expecting an attack, is aided by BOPE officers. They shoot some of the assailants, but Rocha escapes. Nascimento is called to testify and implicates the Governor, Guaracy, Fortunato and many other individuals, as many of them are murdered to prevent them from testifying. The Governor, however, is re-elected and Guaracy becomes representative for Rio. The final scene shows Nascimento reflecting over the political scenario in Brazil and stating that "as long as the conditions for the system remain, it will remain". He visits Rafael as he slowly wakes from his coma.

Dima Nikitin, a plumber, is a municipal repair-crew chief living in an unnamed Russian town. Determined to improve his family's finances by attending engineering school, he is negatively affected by his cynical community. He lives with his hasty mother, apathetic father, and wife and son. When Nikitin discovers a leaky pipe in a building and goes outside to inspect a related crack in the wall, he notices the entire building is leaning. Determining the building will collapse within the next 24 hours, the compassionate Nikitin attempts to alert authorities: Arriving at a birthday party for Mayor Nina Galaganova, he realizes everyone is too intoxicated to understand the severity as they dismiss the validity of Nikitin's claim with various cynical jokes. They finally become concerned once they realize they will be publicly ruined after the collapse. They begin to criticize each other the corruption they all participate in until they are faced with the difficulty of abruptly trying to relocate the building's 820 residents. Galaganova sends Public Housing Inspector Fedotov and Fire Chief Matyugin to assess the damage with Nikitin. The officials accept that the building will collapse after Nikitin demonstrates the tilt by rolling a bottle off the building's roof. They report their findings to Galaganova and her political entourage who all realize that an evacuation of this scale would cause a financial review and reveal years of administrative corruption. Galaganova and Deputy Mayor Bogachyov decide to pin the expected building collapse on Fedotov and Matyugin. Nikitin, Fedotov, and Matyugin are told by Police Chief Sayapin that arrangements are being made for evacuation. The three men are put into a police van allegedly to meet Galaganova, but instead, they are driven to a remote location on the city outskirts. Fedotov and Matyugin realize that Galaganova wants to eliminate them and use them as scapegoats for the collapse. Fedotov pleads with the policemen to release Nikitin and they reluctantly agree, instructing him to leave the city with his family immediately. Matyugin and Fedotov are executed. As Nikitin attempts to leave town with his family, he realizes no one is evacuating the building. When his wife Masha scolds him for wanting to help the residents, who are "nobodies", he says, "We live like animals and we die like animals because we are nobodies to each other." He tells her to leave and, taking matters into his own hands, goes from door to door urging residents to leave before the building collapses. As the residents all gather outside, they soon become annoyed by the disruption and decide they do not believe him. The final scene shows Nikitin laying in a fetal position after the angry residents all attack and severely beat him.

In the early hours, con artist Juan successfully scams a cashier at a convenience store, and is apprehended by the staff as he attempts the same scam on a different cashier. Fellow con artist Marcos feigns being a police officer and takes Juan away from the store. Marcos requests Juan be his partner for the day, saying his has recently disappeared. Although reluctant, Juan agrees because his father, also a con man, is in jail and requires $70,000 to bribe a judge at his hearing. Later that day, the pair are presented an elaborate and lucrative scheme when Sandler, Marcos' elderly former associate, contacts him to help sell the "Nine Queens", a counterfeit sheet of rare stamps, to Vidal Gandolfo, a wealthy Spanish collector staying at the hotel where Marcos' sister, Valeria, works. Vidal will be deported from Argentina the following day due to corruption charges. Vidal meets with Marcos and Juan. Lacking sufficient time to properly authenticate the stamps, Vidal hires an expert who confirms their validity. Vidal offers $450,000 for the stamps, with the exchange to take place that evening. Outside the hotel, the expert tells Marcos and Juan he knew the stamps were forged and demands a bribe. The fake stamps are then stolen out of Juan and Marcos' hands by thieves on a motorcycle who, unaware of their value, toss them into a river. To salvage the scheme, Marcos and Juan approach Sandler's widowed sister Berta; her deceased husband owned the real stamps. She agrees to sell for $250,000. Marcos says he can put up $200,000 and asks Juan to contribute the remaining $50,000, but Juan becomes suspicious of Marcos since it is the exact amount of money he so far has saved. After visiting his father in jail, he ultimately agrees to the arrangement and the pair buy the real stamps. Marcos and Juan return to the hotel to meet Vidal. After finding out Valeria is Marcos' sister, Vidal says he will now only buy the stamps if he is able to have sex with Valeria. Valeria agrees, and says her price for doing so is for Marcos to confess to their younger brother, Federico, that Marcos cheated both Valeria and Federico out of their family inheritance. After he does so, Valeria spends the night with Vidal. The next morning, Valeria informs them that Vidal paid for the stamps with a certified check. On their way to the bank, an attempted mugging is revealed to be an attempted con by Marcos to cheat Juan out of his share; Juan reveals he hid the check and will hand it to Marcos as they reach the bank. Upon arrival, they see a crowd outside and learn the bank has failed due to fraud by the management, making the check worthless. Juan, looking disillusioned, walks away, while Marcos sticks around to see if he can find a way to still get the money. Juan arrives at a warehouse, where he greets the motorcycle thieves, Vidal, Sandler, Berta, and Valeria, who is Juan's girlfriend – revealing that the real con was to swindle Marcos out of $200,000, as revenge for all the times he cheated his family and his partners. It has been argued that the film draws attention to the endemic nature of corruption in Argentinan society, whilst demonstrating a national "desire to take action against the corrupt and greedy (embodied in Marcos) in the absence of a reliable justice system".

In 1982, an extraterrestrial mothership arrives and hovers over the South African city of Johannesburg. Inside, an investigation team finds over a million starved insectoid and crustacean -like aliens and the South African government voluntarily relocates the asylum seekers to a refugee camp called District 9. 28 years later, District 9 becomes both a ghetto and a shanty town, and humans come to view the aliens — derogatorily called " Prawns " — as filthy, violent animals who bleed resources from them. The Prawns have been systematically reduced to second-class citizens there and have been known to consume canned cat food. Following unrest between the aliens and humans, the government hires the Multinational United (MNU), a large defense contractor, to forcibly relocate the extraterrestrials to a labour camp outside the city. Piet Smit, an MNU executive, appoints his son-in-law and MNU bureaucrat, Wikus van de Merwe, to lead the forced relocation. Meanwhile, three aliens, Christopher Johnson, his young son CJ, and Paul search a District 9 refuse dump for Prawn technology; Christopher has spent the last 20 years synthesizing fuel from their contents. They finally fill an entire container in Paul's shack as the relocation begins, but when Wikus comes to serve Paul a notice, he finds the hidden container and accidentally sprays some fuel into his face. Koobus Venter, a cruel MNU mercenary who is speciesist against the Prawns, kills Paul. Wikus begins mutating into a Prawn, starting with his left arm that was injured after the exposure. He is taken to an underground MNU lab, where researchers discover his hybrid DNA grants Wikus the ability to operate Prawn weaponry, which is biologically restricted from humans. When there, Wikus discovers the grisly medical experiments, including vivisections the scientists were performing on the Prawns. Seeing the potential for profitable weapons research, Smit orders Wikus's organs to be harvested for genetic material. Wikus, however, overpowers the lab personnel and escapes. While Venter's forces hunt him, a fake news story is broadcast claiming Wikus is a wanted fugitive, who has contracted a contagious disease from copulating with extraterrestrials. Wikus takes refuge in District 9, finding Christopher and the spaceship's command module dropship concealed underneath his shack. Christopher explains that the confiscated fuel is needed to reactivate the dropship, which can then dock with the mothership. This would allow Christopher to rescue his species and return home, and cure Wikus with the equipment onboard. Encouraged by a phone call from his wife, Tania, Wikus steals powerful alien weapons from Obasanjo, a Nigerian crime lord who believes that eating Wikus' alien arm will grant him alien abilities. Wikus and Christopher attack the MNU and retrieve the fuel from the underground lab, where Christopher is horrified by the vivisections and other brutal medical experiments the MNU has performed on his species. Returning to the shack, Christopher decides that he must leave Earth immediately and return with help, therefore he must postpone curing Wikus's condition for up to three years. Unsatisfied with that answer, Wikus knocks Christopher unconscious and attempts to fly the module to the mothership, but Venter has it shot down. Venter captures Wikus and Christopher, but Obasanjo's gang ambushes them and abduct Wikus. CJ, who remained hidden in the dropship, remotely activates the mother ship and a mecha alien battle suit in Obasanjo's base. The mecha suit guns down the Nigerian gangsters; Wikus enters the mecha suit and attempts to escape on his own. However, when he overhears Venter's order to kill Christopher, Wikus has a change of heart and returns to rescue Christopher from the mercenaries. Heading towards the dropship, the two come under heavy fire; Wikus decides to stay behind and fend off the mercenaries, buying time for Christopher and CJ to escape. Christopher promises to return and cure Wikus. After all of the other mercenaries are killed, Venter finally cripples the mecha suit, but several Prawns kill and dismember him before he can summarily execute Wikus. Christopher makes it into the dropship with CJ, and the dropship is levitated via a tractor beam back into the mothership, which finally leaves Earth. Wikus disappears, the MNU's medical experiments are exposed to the public, and the aliens are moved to a concentration camp called District 10. Tania finds a handcrafted metal flower on her doorstep, giving her hope that Wikus is still alive. Wikus, now fully transformed into a Prawn, is shown in a wrecking yard crafting more flowers for his wife.

On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a security guard at the Watergate complex finds a door's bolt taped over to prevent it from locking. He calls the police, who find and arrest five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters within the complex. The next morning, The Washington Post assigns new reporter Bob Woodward to the local courthouse to cover the story, which is considered of minor importance. Woodward learns that the five men — James W. McCord Jr. and four Cuban-Americans from Miami—possessed electronic bugging equipment, and are represented by a high-priced "country club" attorney. At the arraignment, McCord identifies himself in court as having recently left the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the others are also revealed to have CIA ties. Woodward connects the burglars to E. Howard Hunt, an employee of President Richard Nixon 's White House Counsel Charles Colson, and formerly of the CIA. Carl Bernstein, another Post reporter, is assigned to cover the Watergate story with Woodward. The two young men are reluctant partners but work well together. Executive editor Benjamin Bradlee believes that their work lacks reliable sources and is not worthy of the Post' s front page, but he encourages further investigation. Woodward contacts a senior government official, an anonymous source he has used before and refers to as " Deep Throat ". Communicating secretly, using a flag placed in a balcony flowerpot to signal meetings, they meet at night in an underground parking garage. Deep Throat speaks vaguely and with metaphors, avoiding substantial facts about the Watergate break-in, but promises to keep Woodward on the right path to the truth, advising Woodward to " follow the money ". Woodward and Bernstein connect the five burglars to corrupt activities involving campaign contributions to Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP or CREEP). This includes a check for $25,000 paid by Kenneth H. Dahlberg, who Miami authorities identified when investigating the Miami-based burglars. However, Bradlee and others at the Post still doubt the investigation and its dependence on sources such as Deep Throat, wondering why the Nixon administration should break the law when the president is almost certain to defeat his opponent, Democratic nominee George McGovern. Through former CREEP treasurer Hugh W. Sloan Jr., Woodward and Bernstein connect a slush fund of hundreds of thousands of dollars to White House chief of staff H. R. Haldeman —"the second most important man in this country"—and to former attorney general John N. Mitchell, now head of CREEP. They learn that CREEP was financing a " ratfucking " campaign to sabotage Democratic presidential candidates a year before the Watergate burglary, when Nixon was lagging Edmund Muskie in the polls. While Bradlee's demand for thoroughness compels the reporters to obtain other sources to confirm the Haldeman connection, the White House issues a non-denial denial of the Post' s above-the-fold story. Bradlee continues to encourage investigation. Woodward again meets secretly with Deep Throat and demands that he be less evasive. Very reluctantly, Deep Throat reveals that Haldeman masterminded the Watergate break-in and cover-up. He also states the cover-up was not only intended to camouflage the CREEP involvement, but also to hide "covert operations" involving "the entire U.S. intelligence community", including the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He warns Woodward and Bernstein that their lives, and those of others, are in danger. When the two relay this information to Bradlee and tell him of the depth of the conspiracy, Bradlee realizes that a constitutional crisis is coming, but tells them to move forward with the story. During the second inauguration of Richard Nixon on January 20, 1973, Bernstein and Woodward type the full story, while a television in the newsroom shows Nixon taking the oath of office for his second term as president. A montage of Watergate-related teletype headlines from the following years is shown, ending with the report of Nixon's resignation and the inauguration of Gerald Ford on August 9, 1974.

The Brewster family of Brooklyn is descended from Mayflower settlers who "scalped the Indians " instead of the other way around, according to Mortimer Brewster. On Halloween day, Mortimer, a theater critic and author who has repeatedly denounced marriage as "an old-fashioned superstition", marries Elaine Harper, his neighbor and a minister's daughter. Before leaving for their Niagara Falls honeymoon, Elaine goes to her father's house to share the news of her marriage, while Mortimer informs his aunts, Abby and Martha, who raised him in the old family home. Mortimer's delusional younger brother, Teddy, who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt, resides with them. Frequently, while running upstairs, Teddy blows a bugle and yells "Charge!", imitating Roosevelt's 1898 charge up San Juan Hill. Searching for the notes for his next book, Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in the window seat. He assumes in horror that Teddy's delusions have led him to murder. Abby and Martha cheerfully confess to killing Mr. Hoskins, explaining that they minister to lonely old bachelors by ending their "suffering". They post a "Room for Rent" sign to attract a suitable subject for their "charity", then serve a glass of elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide. Including Mr. Hoskins, the aunts have murdered twelve men; the bodies are buried in the cellar by Teddy, who believes they are yellow fever victims at the Panama Canal. Teddy moves Mr. Hoskins from the window seat down to the cellar. To protect his aunts in case the bodies are discovered, Mortimer frantically leaves to file paperwork to have Teddy legally committed to the Happy Dale mental asylum. In Mortimer's absence, his older brother, Jonathan, arrives with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein. Altered by Einstein while drunk, Jonathan's face resembles Boris Karloff 's Frankenstein appearance. Jonathan is a serial killer with a body count of twelve, fleeing from the police, and intending to dispose of his latest murder victim, Mr. Spenalzo. Shortly after Jonathan and Einstein hide Spenalzo's body in the window seat, Mortimer returns; discovering the corpse, he demands that the pair leave. However, the two criminals reveal they have found Mr. Hoskins' body in the cellar. Mortimer rushes out to obtain a second signature for Teddy's commitment papers. Learning his aunts' secret and mocked by Einstein for their equivalent victim tally, Jonathan determines to increase his body count by killing Mortimer. Meanwhile, Mortimer visits Elaine, expressing his reservations about their marriage due to his family's insanity. When Mortimer returns, Einstein offers him a chance to leave, distracting him while Jonathan takes Spenalzo to the cellar. Mortimer decries the stupidity of characters in plays who are aware that they are in a house with killers but fail to realize the danger. Sneaking up from behind, Jonathan ties up and gags Mortimer. While Jonathan and Einstein argue about killing Mortimer, Officer O'Hara arrives in response to complaints from neighbors regarding Teddy's bugle blasts. After Einstein claims that Mortimer is enacting a scene from a play, O'Hara excitedly recites the plot of the play he is writing. Jonathan prepares to kill O'Hara but is knocked out by Einstein. O'Hara's partners arrive looking for the overdue O'Hara; mistaking an imminent arrest, Jonathan discloses the thirteen bodies buried in the cellar. Lieutenant Rooney arrives looking for the errant officers; recognizing Jonathan from "Wanted" posters as an escapee from an Indiana mental asylum, he arrests Jonathan, discounting his claim. When Mr. Witherspoon comes to take Teddy to Happy Dale, Abby and Martha insist on joining him. Einstein flees after signing the aunts' commitment papers. After Mortimer signs the papers as next of kin, the aunts inform him that he is not actually a Brewster; his mother was the family cook and his father was a chef on a steamship. Ecstatic, Mortimer rushes to find Elaine, who is horrified after discovering the corpses in the cellar. Before Elaine can exclaim about the bodies in the presence of others, Mortimer silences her by kissing her and whisking her off on their honeymoon.

In 2027, total human infertility has led to wars and global depression, pushing civilization to the brink of collapse as humanity faces extinction. The UK has transformed into a totalitarian police state in which asylum seekers are arrested and put in camps. Daily life is full of bombings, rationing, decay and propaganda. The populace mourns as they hear the news that the youngest person alive in the world is killed at age eighteen. Theo Faron, a former activist turned cynical, depressed bureaucrat, is kidnapped by the Fishes, a militant refugee-rights group led by Theo's estranged wife, Julian Taylor. The pair separated after their son's death in 2008. Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers from his cousin, the Minister of Arts, for a young refugee woman named Kee. Theo visits his cousin inside an elite mini-city within London where the powerful enjoy all the pleasures of the past. Theo obtains joint transit papers from his cousin, then tells Julian that he must escort Kee himself in exchange for more money. Luke, a Fishes member, drives Theo, Kee, Julian, and Miriam towards Canterbury, but they are ambushed and Julian is killed. After the rest escape, Luke kills two police officers that stop them. At a farm safe house, Kee reveals to Theo that she is pregnant, making her the only known pregnant woman in the world. Julian intended to take her to the Human Project, a secret scientific research group in the Azores dedicated to curing humanity's infertility. That night, Theo eavesdrops and learns that Luke and other Fishes orchestrated Julian's death, while also intending to kill Theo and use Kee's baby as their political tool. Theo orchestrates an escape for himself, Kee, and Miriam, a midwife, to the secluded hideaway of Jasper Palmer, a bohemian, old friend of Theo. The group plans to reach the Human Project ship, the “Tomorrow”, that Julian had scheduled to arrive offshore at Bexhill, a notorious refugee detention centre. Jasper arranges for Syd, an immigration officer to whom Jasper sells cannabis, to smuggle them into Bexhill as refugees, from where they can take a rowboat and rendezvous with the ship. The next day, the Fishes arrive at Jasper's hidden entrance, forcing the group to flee. Jasper stays behind to stall them and is murdered by Luke. At an abandoned school, Syd meets Theo, Kee, and Miriam, and helps them board a bus to the camp where Kee's water breaks, and Miriam is dragged off the bus. In Bexhill, their contact Marichka, a Romani woman, provides Theo and Kee a room, where Theo helps Kee give birth. The next day Syd arrives to tell them that war has broken out between the British Armed Forces and the refugees, and that the Fishes have infiltrated the camp. He reveals that Theo and Kee have a bounty on their heads and attempts to capture them. Marichka and Theo fight off Syd, and the group takes shelter with a kindly, elderly Russian couple. Heading for the rowboat, the Fishes capture Kee and the baby. Luke initially tells Patric and others to spare the group, but once Kee and the baby are out of earshot, Luke tells Patric to kill the Russian couple and Theo. Patric shoots one of the two refugees, but is interrupted by an attack by British troops. Theo flees and tracks Kee to an apartment building under heavy fire. Theo confronts Luke, who tells Theo "We need him," mistaking the baby for a boy; Theo corrects Luke, who says "I had a sister" before pleading for the child again and subsequently being killed in an explosion. Awed by the sight of an actual baby, the British soldiers and Fishes momentarily stop fighting to allow Theo, Kee and the baby to leave the battle before the violence immediately resumes. Marichka leads them to the rowboat but stays behind. As British fighter jets bomb Bexhill, Theo and Kee row to the buoy rendezvous point. Theo reveals he had been shot, and teaches Kee how to burp her baby. Kee tells him she will name the baby girl Dylan, after Theo's and Julian's lost son. Theo smiles weakly, then loses consciousness as the Tomorrow approaches. There is children's laughter.

The film opens with brightly lit images of couples dancing the jitterbug, over which a young blonde woman appears smiling and being applauded, followed by a point-of-view shot descending toward a pillow as someone lies down. At night on Mulholland Drive, a brunette woman in an elegant evening dress narrowly escapes being shot by her chauffeur when another car crashes into them. Left with amnesia, she wanders into Los Angeles and hides in a vacant apartment. The next morning, she is discovered by Betty Elms, an aspiring actress newly arrived from Deep River, Ontario, who is staying at her aunt's place. The brunette adopts the name "Rita" after seeing a poster of Rita Hayworth and recalls only that she is in danger. The two become friends and discover a blue key and a large sum of cash in Rita's purse. A man eating at a diner recounts a nightmare to his friend in which he encounters a monstrous figure in the alley behind the diner. When they go outside to investigate, a filthy homeless person appears from around a corner exactly as predicted, and the man collapses in shock. Film director Adam Kesher is pressured by mob -connected businessmen to cast an unknown blonde, Camilla Rhodes, in his new film The Sylvia North Story. When he refuses, the mob shuts down production and freezes his accounts. He returns home to find his wife cheating on him, is beaten and thrown out, and finds out his bank account has been frozen. A mysterious cowboy warns him to cast Camilla. Meanwhile, incompetent hitman Joe Messing botches a job, killing bystanders. Rita remembers the name "Diane Selwyn," and Betty locates her address in a phone book. A seemingly psychic neighbor warns that "someone is in trouble," and building manager Coco cautions Betty about letting Rita stay. Betty leaves for an audition, where she performs brilliantly; a casting agent brings her to Adam's audition for The Sylvia North Story. While Camilla auditions with a performance of " I've Told Ev'ry Little Star," Betty and Adam share a brief but intense glance before she slips away to meet Rita. Adam agrees to cast Camilla to appease the mob. Betty and Rita visit Diane's apartment complex, where a neighbor who recently exchanged units with Diane says she has not been seen in some time and directs them to her apartment. Inside, they discover a woman's decomposing corpse on the bed. Rita panics and tries to cut her own hair, but Betty instead disguises her with a blonde wig. That night, they have sex and Betty twice confesses she is in love. Rita later wakes them both by chanting silencio, no hay banda ('silence, there is no band') in her sleep, and insists on visiting Club Silencio, where the host explains all performances are pre-recorded. Betty and Rita weep as Rebekah Del Rio performs a Spanish rendition of " Crying," and Betty discovers a blue box in her purse that matches Rita's key. Back at the apartment, Rita unlocks the box and realizes Betty has vanished, then disappears herself. The narrative shifts to Diane, a depressed and struggling actress who looks exactly like Betty. She awakens in the bedroom where the corpse was found. Moving through her morning in a daze, she recalls memories of her former lover Camilla, a femme fatale actress who resembles Rita: a volatile sexual encounter and breakup; being forced to watch Adam and Camilla kiss during a film rehearsal; and a dinner party at Adam's house, where Diane learns she lost the lead in The Sylvia North Story to Camilla, to whom Adam announces his engagement. The memories culminate in Diane hiring Joe at the diner to kill Camilla, with a blue key promised as confirmation. The homeless person behind the diner opens the blue box, releasing a tiny elderly couple – the same pair who accompanied Betty upon her arrival in Los Angeles. Back in the present, a traumatized Diane stares at the blue key on her coffee table. Terrorized by hallucinations of the elderly couple, she flees to her bedroom and shoots herself, dying in the same position as the earlier corpse. As the room fills with gunsmoke, Betty and Rita are shown smiling at each other. At Club Silencio, a blue-haired woman whispers "silencio".

The United States is devastated by a mysterious phenomenon that reanimates recently-dead human beings as flesh-eating zombies. At the dawn of the crisis, it has been reported that millions of people have died and reanimated. Despite the government's best efforts, social order is collapsing. While rural communities have natural barriers, such as Johnstown, and the National Guard have been effective in fighting the zombie hordes in open country, urban centers have descended into chaos. At WGON-TV, a television studio in Philadelphia, traffic reporter Stephen Andrews and his pregnant girlfriend, producer Francine Parker, are planning to steal the station's helicopter to escape the city. Across town, Philadelphia Police Department SWAT officer Roger DeMarco and his team raid a low-income housing project, whose mostly black and Latino tenants are defying the martial law of delivering their dead to the National Guard. The tenants and the officers exchange gunfire as the officers try to gain entry, and indiscriminate attacks by racist officers and the reanimated dead exacerbate the resulting chaos. Roger encounters an officer from another unit, Peter Washington. As the SWAT team successfully dispatch the zombies, a disillusioned Roger suggests that he and Peter desert and join up with Stephen (who is Roger's friend) in escaping the city. Roger and Peter join Fran and Stephen at a police dock and then leave Philadelphia in a stolen WGON-TV news helicopter. Following some close calls while stopping for fuel, the group comes across a shopping mall, and decide to remain there since there is plenty of food, medicine, and all kinds of consumables. Roger, Peter and Stephen camouflage the entrance to the stairwell leading to their safe room and block the mall entrances with trucks to keep the undead from penetrating. This involves driving through crowds of zombies, who attack the trucks. Roger becomes reckless and is soon bitten by the zombies. After clearing the mall of zombies, the group builds a hidden safe room as a fallback in case of future attacks, before settling into a hedonistic lifestyle with all the goods available to them. Roger eventually succumbs to his wounds and dies; when he reanimates, Peter shoots him in the head and buries his body in the mall. Months later, all emergency broadcast transmissions cease, suggesting that the government has collapsed. Now isolated, the three load some supplies into the helicopter, in case they might need to leave suddenly. Fran gets Stephen to teach her how to fly in case he is killed or incapacitated. A nomadic biker gang sees the helicopter in flight and breaks into the mall, destroying the barriers and allowing hundreds of zombies back inside. Despite having a fallback plan should the mall be attacked, Stephen, consumed by territorial rage, takes matters into his own hands by firing on the looters, beginning a protracted battle. On their way out, straggling bikers are overwhelmed and eaten by the zombies. Stephen tries to hide in the elevator shaft, but gets shot and subsequently mauled by roaming zombies. When Stephen reanimates, he instinctively returns to the safe room and leads the undead to Fran and Peter. Peter kills the undead Stephen while Fran escapes to the roof. Peter, not wanting to leave, locks himself in a room and contemplates suicide. When the zombies burst in, he has a change of heart and fights his way up to the roof, where he joins Fran. Having escaped and low on fuel, the two then fly away in the helicopter to an uncertain future.

Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov Jr.), recently discharged after serving in the First Chechen War, returns to his hometown. His mother insists that he travel to Saint Petersburg to seek out his successful older brother Viktor (Viktor Sukhorukov), who his mother is confident will help him make a living. Arriving in Saint Petersburg, Danila wanders around the city and befriends Kat (Maria Zhukova), an energetic party girl, and an elderly Russian German named Hoffman (Yury Kuznetsov), a homeless street vendor whom Danila rescues from a thug attempting to extort him. Unbeknown to their mother, Viktor is an accomplished hitman who goes by the nickname "Tatar", working for a St. Petersburg mafia boss called "Krugly" (Russian for "round"). His latest target is "the Chechen", a Chechen mafia boss who had seized a local market. Krugly (Sergei Murzin), who is unhappy with the amount of money that Viktor has demanded for the hit, orders his thugs to watch the Chechen, so that they can kill Viktor after the hit and thereby avoid paying him. Danila eventually meets up with Viktor. To avoid exposure, Viktor passes his assignment to his brother, gives him money to settle in the city, and then lies to him that the Chechen has been extorting from him, asking Danila to perform the hit. Danila agrees. Through Hoffman's friends, Danila rents a room in the apartment of an elderly alcoholic war veteran. Arriving in the market in a disguise, Danila detonates several homemade explosives as a distraction, and, taking advantage of the confusion, kills the Chechen, but Krugly's men pursue Danila and manage to wound him. Danila barely escapes the pursuit, jumping onto a freight tram, and in a shootout kills one of the bandits. Tram driver Sveta (Svetlana Pismichenko) offers to help the wounded Danila, but he refuses, promising to find her later and thank her. After Danila recovers with Hoffman's help, he sets off to look for Sveta. A relationship develops between them, despite Sveta having a husband who is rarely home and who constantly beats her. Meanwhile, Krugly finds the tram on which Danila escaped and asks Sveta about it, who puts Krugly on a false trail. Krugly promises to punish her if she deceived them. Danila goes to visit Sveta, having bought her a radio with a CD player as a gift. Left alone in the room, he runs into her husband, who unexpectedly arrives. Danila takes the keys to the room from him and forbids him to show up in the future. After going to a party with Kat and having sex with her, Danila wakes up in his apartment to a phone call from Viktor. Pretending to be ill, Viktor asks him to take part in another job in his place, and Danila agrees again. Meanwhile, Krugliy decides to draw the Tatar into a combined raid. Danila meets the two bandits and together they go to an apartment where the target is supposed to appear. Taking the owner of the apartment hostage, they wait for the target, who has gone to get some vodka. At the same time, a group of local musicians is celebrating a birthday one floor above, and one of the guests, sound engineer Stepan, mistakes the floor and ends up in the apartment where Danila and the bandits are. Stepan turns out to be an unwanted witness, and the bandits take him hostage. Danila promises him that he will not be harmed. Some time later, Vyacheslav Butusov (cameo) also calls the apartment by mistake. Danila follows Butusov up to the apartment on the floor above and listens to the music. Returning to the apartment and seeing that the bandits have killed the owner and are about to deal with Stepan, Danila says that he will do it himself, takes a gun from one of the bandits, but unexpectedly shoots the two bandits. With Stepan's help, he hides the bodies in the cemetery and asks Hoffman to bury them. Krugly and his men begin hunting for Danila. They come to Sveta, beat and rape her, but they fail to learn anything about Danila. A bandit nicknamed Krot sets up an ambush for Danila, but Danila manages to survive and kill Krot. Coming to Sveta and seeing her beaten, Danila learns that this is Krugly's work. Krugly takes Viktor hostage and, threatening to kill him, demands that he hand over Danila and return the money. At this point, Danila calls his brother and is suspicious after hearing his frightened voice. Danila buys a shotgun from his landlord, makes a sawed-off shotgun out of it and, rescuing his brother, kills Krugly and his men. In light of these events, Viktor is afraid that Danila will punish him for betrayal, but Danila calms him down, remembering sentimental memories from their childhood. Danila takes the briefcase with money from the apartment and advises his brother to return home to his mother and get a job with the police. Then he comes to Sveta, but, having witnessed her husband beating her again, he shoots him in the legs with the sawed-off shotgun. Unexpectedly for Danila, Sveta rushes to help her abusive husband, shouting at Danila that she does not love him and demanding that he leave. Having left Sveta, a frustrated Danila goes to Hoffman, discusses with him the pernicious influence of the big city on people and finally offers him money, but he refuses. Then Danila meets Kat, tells her about his departure and gives her a wad of dollars. The film ends with Danila walking out onto a snowy highway and hitchhiking toward Moscow.

"August, 1962 was a stormy time for France. Many people felt that President Charles de Gaulle had betrayed the country by giving independence to Algeria. Extremists, mostly from the army, swore to kill him in revenge. They banded together in an underground movement and called themselves the OAS." The far-right Organisation armée secrète ("Secret Army Organisation") plots to assassinate President de Gaulle. The first attempt on 22 August fails, leaving de Gaulle and his entourage unharmed. Within six months, OAS leader Jean Bastien-Thiry and several members are captured, and Bastien-Thiry is executed. With their initial plot foiled, the remaining OAS leaders, now hiding in Austria, hatch a new plan. They enlist the services of an apolitical British assassin given the code name "Jackal," a figure already credited with the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo. Aware that targeting de Gaulle is extremely risky and demanding a final retirement in anonymity, the Jackal insists on a fee of $500,000, half to be paid upfront into his Swiss bank account. To raise the money, the OAS uses its extensive network to execute a series of bank robberies. Preparing for his mission, the Jackal travels to Genoa where he commissions a custom single-shot rifle from a skilled gunsmith and secures fake identity papers from a forger—a man he later kills when the criminal attempts to extort him. In Paris, the Jackal duplicates a key to a sixth-floor flat overlooking a historically significant square, setting the stage for the planned assassination. Meanwhile, the OAS leadership has relocated to Rome, although their activities continue to draw the attention of French security forces. French intelligence makes a breakthrough when they kidnap the OAS's chief clerk, Viktor Wolenski. Although Wolenski dies during interrogation, he reveals crucial details of the plot, including the term "Jackal". In response, the Interior Minister convenes a secret meeting with top security officials. Police Commissioner Berthier recommends his deputy, Claude Lebel, to lead the investigation under the constraints of secrecy with Lebel being granted special emergency powers despite de Gaulle's insistence on maintaining his public schedule. Complicating matters further, Colonel St Clair—de Gaulle's personal military aide and a cabinet member—divulges classified details to his new mistress, Denise, an OAS agent. At the same time, Lebel is informed by Special Branch that a British national, Charles Harold Calthrop, might be connected to the assassination plot and travelling under the alias Paul Oliver Duggan. Despite learning that his plot is compromised, and he can walk away keeping his down payment, the Jackal decides to stay in France and presses forward. While staying in a hotel in Nice, he meets and seduces the aristocratic Colette de Montpellier, but narrowly evades capture as Lebel and his team close in. After surviving a severe vehicular accident, the Jackal flees to Madame de Montpellier's country estate. There, when she reveals that the police have already questioned her and probes for more details from him, he kills her. Dyeing his blonde hair brown and donning spectacles, he assumes the identity of a Danish schoolteacher, Per Lundquist, then boards a train for Paris. The discovery of Madame de Montpellier's murder allows Lebel to drop all secrecy constraints and launch a public manhunt. The Jackal temporarily hides at the flat of a man he picks up in a Turkish bath, killing him when the man learns of Montpellier's murder. At a subsequent cabinet meeting, Lebel predicts that the Jackal will try to shoot de Gaulle during the upcoming Liberation Day ceremony marking the commemoration of Paris's liberation during World War II. Despite Lebel's efficient and successful leadership of the investigation, he is dismissed from the case as the Minister assumes command directly for the final part, only to be reinstated less than 24 hours later when the Minister draws a blank and Lebel's expertise is recognised as indispensable. On Liberation Day, the Jackal disguises himself as an elderly French veteran, André Martin, and conceals his rifle within crutches. Using the previously duplicated key, he accesses an upper story room of a building overlooking the ceremony. When de Gaulle unexpectedly leans forward while presenting a medal to a veteran, the Jackal's shot narrowly misses. While the Jackal is reloading for a second attempt, Lebel and a gendarme storm the room. The Jackal kills the policeman before being fatally shot by Lebel. Back in London, the real Charles Calthrop arrives at his flat, interrupting the policemen as they sift through his belongings. Ultimately, the assassin is interred in an unmarked grave, leaving the true identity behind his many disguises an enduring mystery.