Making a rare foray into rock 'em, sock 'em action territory, Hawke plays a CIA agent who sacrifices everything for his employers, including his family and, ultimately, his own life. No sooner has he shuffled off this mortal coil, though, than he finds himself mysteriously resurrected for one last mission that's timed to last exactly 24 hours. Once the countdown clock embedded in his arm reaches zero, he'll once again nod off into an eternal slumber if he hasn't completed his task. Before that happens, expect him to wreak bloody havoc on both his targets and his former CIA minders.

Kim Sherwood is a young naive teenager who is asked by a friend to model for a shady photographer named Harmon. The photographer works for an unscrupulous businessman who is in league with a local Miami teenage gang in illegally selling photos of young girls in the nude being used and abused. When Kim wants out, the gangster Mr. Lang, blackmails her into staying on by using his strong-armed thugs to enforce order.

Two Americans sharing a flat in Paris, playwright Tom Chambers and painter George Curtis, fall for free-spirited Gilda Farrell. When she can't make up her mind which one of them she prefers, she proposes a "gentleman's agreement": She will move in with them as a friend and critic of their work, but they will never have sex. But when Tom goes to London to supervise a production of one of his plays, leaving Gilda alone with George, how long will their gentleman's agreement last?

Two parallel stories are told. In the first, a group of research scientists from a variety of backgrounds are investigating the strange appearance of items in remote locations, primarily desert regions. In continuing their investigation, one of the lead scientists, a Frenchman named Claude Lacombe, incorporates the Kodály method of music education as a means of communication in their work. The response, in turn, at first baffles the researchers, until American cartographer David Laughlin deciphers the meaning of the response. In the second, electric company lineman and family man Roy Neary and single mother Jillian Guiler are among some individuals in Muncie, Indiana who experience some paranormal activity before some flashes of bright lights in the sky, which they believe to be a UFO. Roy becomes obsessed with what he saw, unlike some others, especially in some form of authority, who refuse to acknowledge their belief that it was a UFO in not wanting to appear crazy. That obsession ...