Lyons, France. Michel Descombes is a watchmaker who lives alone with his teenage son Bernard. When the police visit and informs him that Bernard killed a man and is on the run with a girl, Michel realizes that he knew far less about his son than he thought.
Underworld drug king Toplar is flooding the market with low-grade heroin. Agent 99 gets a bit too close to the truth, but manages to gasp out a clue as to the identity of Toplar: he has a scar. Jane (Agent 73) is called in to find Toplar, and gets a camera implanted in her breast in order to photograph the bad guys she dispatches so headquarters will be able to identify Toplar when she finds him. Meanwhile she begins falling in love with fellow agent Jim.
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
A federal agent whose daughter dies of a heroin overdose is determined to destroy the drug ring that supplied her. He recruits various people whose lives have been torn apart by the drug trade and trains them. Then they all leave for France to track down and destroy the ring.
After a fundraiser for a black politician is robbed, Detroit police put two detectives, one white and one black, on the case, who try to work together under boiling political pressure.
In the wake of a Supreme Court decision to outlaw the death penalty, California passes an initiative that designates San Bruno island as a dumping spot for first-degree murder convicts, free to do what they like except leave. The main camp of convicts is controlled by the tyrannical Bobby, who rules with an iron hand, and the women are used as sex slaves. A.J. and a group of more free-minded murderers have escaped and gone into hiding. When A.J. and his men liberate the women from Bobby's custody, tensions mount to an all-out confrontation for control of the island.
During the Great Depression, a con man finds himself saddled with a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, and the two forge an unlikely partnership.
After a Chinese restaurant in Rome is threatened by the mafia, who will stop at nothing to acquire the property, the owner recruits a family friend in Hong Kong, kung fu expert Tang Lung, to help them defend their business.
A Parisian police chief has an affair, but unbeknownst to him, the boyfriend of the woman he’s having an affair with is a bank robber planning a heist.
When a shipment of heroin disappears between Italy and New York, a small-time pimp in Milan is framed for the theft. Two professional hitmen are dispatched from New York to find him, but the real thieves want to get rid of him before the New York killers get to him to eliminate any chance of them finding out he's the wrong man.
On the eve of her 17th birthday, Mari and friend Phyllis set off from her family home to attend a rock concert in the city. Attempting to score some drugs on the way, the pair run afoul of a group of vicious crooks, headed up by the sadistic Krug.
Ivanhoe Martin arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. He records his first song, "The Harder They Come," but after a bitter dispute with a manipulative producer named Hilton, soon finds himself resorting to petty crime in order to pay the bills. He deals marijuana, kills some abusive cops and earns local folk hero status. Meanwhile, his record is topping the charts.
"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson, a transient woman in Arkansas during the violence-filled Depression of the early '30s, meets up with rabble-rousing union man "Big" Bill Shelly and the two team up to fight the corrupt railroad establishment.