Based on true events and the novel of the same name. Vice detective Bob Hightower finds his ex-wife murdered and daughter kidnapped by a cult. Frustrated by the botched official investigations, he quits the force and infiltrates the cult to hunt down the leader with the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin.

Anna Fitzgerald looks to earn medical emancipation from her parents who until now have relied on their youngest child to help their leukemia-stricken daughter Kate remain alive.

After her abusive husband leaves, Monica asks her neighbor to look after her son while she's at work. Mildred's angry daughter's just moved out, so she's happy to have JJ.

Maureen is pregnant and her husband Eddie is missing. Nervous, Maureen shares a couple of drinks with neighbor Kiefer, who tries to rape her and then beats her. When Eddie returns and finds his wife bruised, he goes ballistic, shoots a paramedic and is put in a psychiatric institution. Ten years later, Eddie is released and finds that Maureen has divorced him and is remarried with three children, one of whom is his little girl Jeanie. Eddie goes to reclaim his wife.

John Quincy Archibald's son Michael collapses while playing baseball as a result of heart failure. John rushes Michael to a hospital emergency room where he is informed that Michael's only hope is a transplant. Unfortunately, John's insurance won't cover his son's transplant. Out of options, John Q. takes the emergency room staff and patients hostage until hospital doctors agree to do the transplant.

In a nursing home, resident Duke (James Garner) reads a romance story to an old woman (Gena Rowlands) who has senile dementia with memory loss. In the late 1930s, wealthy 17-year-old Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams) is spending summer vacation in Seabrook. Local worker Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) meets Allie at a carnival and they soon fall in love with each other. One day, Noah brings Allie to an ancient house that he dreams of buying and restoring and they attempt to make love but get interrupted by their friend. Allie's parents do not approve of their romance since Noah belongs to another social class, and they move to New York with her. Noah writes 365 letters (one a day for a year) to Allie, but her mother Anne Hamilton (Joan Allen) does not deliver them to her daughter. Three years later, the United States joins the World War II and Noah and his best friend Fin (Kevin Connolly) enlist in the army, and Allie works as an army nurse. She meets injured soldier Lon Hammond (James Marsden) in the hospital. After the war, they meet each other again going on dates and then, Lon, who is wealthy and handsome, proposes. Meanwhile, Noah buys and restores the old house and many people want to buy it. When Allie accidentally sees the photo of Noah and his house in a newspaper, she feels divided between her first love and her commitment with Lon. Meanwhile, Duke stops reading to the old lady since his children are visiting him in the nursing home.

1999, Claremont, California. Middle-class kids, in their 20s, talk trash, wave guns, hang out in a pack. Johnny Truelove, drug dealer and son of a underworld figure, threatens Jake Mazursky, an explosive head case who owes Johnny money; Jake responds by breaking into Johnny's house. On impulse, Johnny and a couple pals kidnap Jake's 15-year-old brother, Zach. Zach's okay with it, figuring his brother will pay the debt soon. Johnny assigns his buddy Frankie to be Zach's minder, and they develop a brotherly friendship. Zach parties with his captors as things begin to spin out of control. Group think, amorality, and fear of prison assert a hold on the pack. Is Zach in danger?

After discovering her boyfriend is married, Carly Whitten tries to get her ruined life back on track. But when she accidentally meets the wife he's been cheating on, she realizes they have much in common, and her sworn enemy becomes her greatest friend. When yet another affair is discovered, all three women team up to plot mutual revenge on their cheating, lying, three-timing SOB.