Shaw is an operative for the United Nations’ covert dirty-tricks squad, using espionage and quasi-ethical tactics to secure peace and cooperation. When a shipping container full of dead Vietnamese refugees turns up on the docks and China’s ambassador is gunned down at a dinner celebrating a new trade agreement with China and the US, Shaw is framed for the murder and must evade the FBI and Triad gangsters to find out what is really going on.

Opening with the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion under Cpt. Miller fight ashore to secure a beachhead. Amidst the fighting, two brothers are killed in action. Earlier in New Guinea, a third brother is KIA. Their mother, Mrs. Ryan, is to receive all three of the grave telegrams on the same day. The United States Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, is given an opportunity to alleviate some of her grief when he learns of a fourth brother, Private James Ryan, and decides to send out 8 men (Cpt. Miller and select members from 2nd Rangers) to find him and bring him back home to his mother…

Richard and Susan are a couple from San Diego, California who are vacationing in Morocco while their two children are at home with their Mexican housekeeper, Amelia. A rifle finds its way into the hands of a local herdsman’s young sons, who recklessly take a shot at a tour bus and hit Susan in the shoulder, causing her severe injury. The distraught Richard calls home to tell Amelia of the situation, who shortly departs for Mexico to attend her son’s wedding, with Richard and Susan’s children in tow. Disaster thus multiplies, with the situation in Morocco ascribed to terrorists in the media, while Amelia meets with trouble at the Mexican border when she attempts to return to San Diego with Richard and Susan’s children. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, a widower tied to the rifle in question, a complex shift of ownership to which the audience is privy, attempts to deal with the memories of his recently deceased wife and his strained relationship with his deaf teenage daughter.

11-year-old Eliza Naumann comes from an odd family; they all divert their emotional frustrations into secret channels. When Eliza unexpectedly begins winning spelling bees, what had been a stable dynamic within the family becomes disrupted; long held secrets emerge, and a latent spiritual yearning is awakened in her withdrawn father Saul and compulsive mother Miriam. As Eliza moves closer and closer to the national spelling bee, the Naumann family finds itself in a spiral of surprising discovery and jarring uncertainty…

1327: after a mysterious death in a Benedictine Abbey, the monks are convinced that the apocalypse is coming. With the Abbey to play host to a council on the Franciscan’s Order’s belief that the Church should rid itself of wealth, William of Baskerville, a respected Franciscan monk, is asked to assist in determining the cause of the untimely death. Alas, more deaths occur as the investigation draws closer to uncovering the secret the Abbey wants hidden, and there is finally no stopping the Holy Inquisition from taking an active hand in the process. William and his young novice must race against time to prove the innocence of the unjustly accused and avoid the wrath of Holy Inquisitor Bernardo Gui.

Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) and her slave, William Shaw (Matthew Modine), are on a quest to recover the three portions of a treasure map. Unfortunately, the final portion is held by her murderous uncle, Dawg (Frank Langella). Her crew is sceptical of her leadership abilities, so she must complete her quest before they mutiny against her. This is made yet more difficult by the efforts of the British crown to end her piratical raids.

Cableman Roy Neary is one of several people who experience a close encounter of the first kind, witnessing UFOs flying through the night sky. He is subsequently haunted by a mountainlike image in his head and becomes obsessed with discovering what it represents, putting severe strain on his marriage. Meanwhile, government agents around the world have a close encounter of the second kind, discovering physical evidence of otherworldly visitors in the form of military vehicles that went missing decades ago suddenly appearing in the middle of nowhere. Roy and the agents both follow the clues they have been given to reach a site where they will have a close encounter of the third kind: contact.