James Mangold

A small-time rancher agrees to hold a captured outlaw who's awaiting a train to go to court in Yuma. A battle of wills ensues as the outlaw tries to psych out the rancher. Rancher Dan Evans heads into Bisbee to clear up issues concerning the sale of his land when he witnesses the closing events of a stagecoach robbery led by famed outlaw Ben Wade. Shortly thereafter, Wade is captured by the law in Bisbee and Evans finds himself one of the escorts who will take Wade to the 3:10 to Yuma train in Contention for the reward of $200. Evans' effort to take Wade to the station is in part an effort to save his land but also part of an inner battle to determine whether he can be more than just a naive rancher in the eyes of his impetuous and gun slinging son William Evans. The transport to Contention is hazardous and filled with ambushes by Indians, pursuits by Wade's vengeful gang and Wade's own conniving and surreptitious demeanor that makes the ride all the more intense.

Malcolm Rivers (Pruitt Taylor Vince) is a psychotic killer awaiting execution for several vicious murders. His psychiatrist, Doctor Malick (Alfred Molina), has discovered a journal belonging to Rivers that may explain why he really committed the murders. With this late evidence brought forth, a new hearing takes place on a stormy night in which Malick will try to persuade the Judge to spare Rivers. Meanwhile, a group of ten strangers, through a number of circumstances, find themselves stranded in the middle of a storm in a remote motel in the Nevada desert. With the phone lines down due to the storm, the group prepare to spend the night, taking care of those that have been injured through their arrival. However, the group quickly finds that there is an unknown murderer present, killing off each of the guests and leaving behind one of the motel's room keys to be found, starting with Room 10's key and counting down. Back at the hearing, the contents of Malcolm's journal are revealed, indicating the prisoner suffers from an extreme case of Dissociative Identity Disorder, harboring ten distinct personalities. Malick is able to bring forth one of Malcolm's personalities, Ed (John Cusack), revealing that events at the motel are occurring inside Malcolm's mind, each personality being a distinct person though all sharing the same birth date. After hearing of events in the motel, Malick informs the Ed personality that he must find and eliminate the hostile personality in order to prevent Malcolm from being executed lest all the personalities be killed off. In the motel setting, as the group is dwindled down, Ed believes that the personality of Rhodes (Ray Liotta) is the murderer, and sacrifices himself to kill Rhodes, leaving only Paris (Amanda Peet) alive. When Malick demonstrates that that homicidal personality is dead, the judge decides to place Malcolm in a mental institution under Malick's care. As Malcolm is driven along with Malick to the institution, in Malcolm's mind, Paris has driven away from the motel to her hometown in Florida. As she tends an orange grove, she discovers the Room 1 motel key in the ground, and turns around to find the young boy Timmy standing behind her. Timmy, the true homicidal personality, had orchestrated all the deaths at the motel, and made it appear that he had been killed as well; he finishes his task by killing Paris, reciting Hughes Mearns's Antigonish. Now driven only by his last personality of Timmy, Malcolm strangles Malick, and the transport van runs off the side of the road.

Susanna Kaysen is a young woman of eighteen, and her life isn't exactly what a normal eighteen-year-old's life is suppose to be like. To her, any kind of sex is casual, and it doesn't matter who she does it with or when, as long as she gets it. At graduation, she falls asleep, proving she has little interest for the norms of prize-givings or anything to do with what's accepted by society. At her father's birthday party, she is under dressed and is of course moaned at by her hypocritical mother. Here we learn that her parent's friends are just as false as what is accepted by everyone. And then it becomes clear that Susanna has been sleeping with her mother's friend's husband. This drives her to try to commit suicide with aspirin and a bottle of vodka to get it all down. At the ER, she claims that she doesn't have bones in her wrists anymore, and tells the psychiatrist at home that the bones grew back by the time she got to the hospital. So she is shipped off to Claymoore, a local mental institution and put in the ward for women only. Here she meets a multitude of people who really do have problems: a sardonic anorexic, a girl who burned herself as a child, a lesbian (at the time was thought of as a mental disorder), a bulimic, and her roommate, a compulsive liar. The ward is managed by Nurse Valerie Owens, who is very clever, but is unable to become a doctor due to her race. All the nursing staff and the patients are kept marginally sane by Valerie, and she and Susanna have a complex relationship. Susanna is questionably diagnosed with having borderline personality disorder. Things really get started when the sociopath runaway patient, Lisa Rowe, returns to the ward and turns Susanna's world upside down and inside out. She is a force to be reckoned with - she is magnetic, rebellious, doesn't take her meds and is unhealthy for the other patients as she breaks down their self-esteem regularly. Due to the fact that her last best friend, Jamie, couldn't hack this when she ran away, Lisa befriends Susanna and together they start a world of trouble. Susanna keeps a diary of all her thoughts and feelings, also illustrating in it, and telling the tale of her stay through her daily entries. Her ex-boyfriend, Tobias Jacobs, comes to visit her and she very nearly tries to have sex with him in her room. He tells her he wants them to run away to Canada together so that he doesn't have to go to Vietnam. He tells her she isn't crazy and that the girls in the institution aren't really her friends. But she refuses to go with him, subconsciously beginning to rely on Lisa. Then she meets the head psychiatrist, Dr. Sonia Wick, and claims she is ambivalent, saying it means she doesn't care. But Dr. Wick sees through this mask and decides to have Susanna see her from now on. Afterwards, Lisa is taken into see the doctor, but doesn't return and Susanna falls into a depression. Nurse Valerie has had enough and throws her into an ice cold bath to wake her. She tells Susanna, after Susanna attacks her verbally and says that she doesn't know what she is doing, that she is a spoiled, lazy little girl who is driving herself crazy! And that if Susanna isn't careful, she will throw her life away on some stupid rebellion. That night, Lisa breaks into the ward, wild-eyed and crazy, and Susanna runs away with her so they can get to Disneyland. There they hook up with hippies and eventually crash at the bulimic Daisy's house after bribing her with promises of meds. But all turns bad when Lisa tells Daisy that she is a freak herself and that this apartment is all a mask to hide what's really happening. She breaks Daisy down, finally saying that Daisy probably likes her father molesting her and that it's probably all she has ever known. The next morning, Susanna wakes up and goes for a walk, to escape the sound of Lisa's voice and returns to find Daisy playing a record over and over again and Lisa in the kitchen. She goes up the stairs and finds Daisy's wrists slit and she hangs herself in the bathroom. Susanna goes back to the institution without Lisa, (who runs away again) and begins anew with Dr. Wick and her diary. When Susanna is ready to leave, Lisa breaks out of her padded cell and steals Susanna's diary. Beneath the ward in the maze of corridors, Lisa reads the diary aloud and tells the other girls what Susanna thinks of them. Susanna runs away from Lisa when she begins to chase her with a needle filled with a toxic-looking chemical. Susanna breaks her hand while trying to close a sliding metal door on Lisa and then they finally confront each other. Susanna finally tells Lisa that no one cares if she dies because she is already dead and her heart is cold. She also tells Lisa that she will begin her life again out of this hospital without Lisa and the others. Lisa has a mental breakdown and attempts to commit suicide but the other girls dissuade her from doing so. In the morning, Susanna is about to leave, but first she goes to visit Lisa and talks to her again. Now restrained to a bed, Lisa says that she isn't really cold and that she didn't mean to hurt Susanna. When she leaves, she says goodbye to all her friends, and gets into the taxicab saying that being crazy isn't about keeping a secret, it's just about everyone being personified. And by the seventies, most of her friends were out of the institution and leading lives. The girl who was just interrupted by herself and everyone else, is finally recovered from being a supposed borderline.

In the fictional town of Garrison, New Jersey, located across the Hudson River from New York City near the George Washington Bridge, a number of residents are NYPD officers. Local sheriff Freddy Heflin (Sylvester Stallone) is secretly in love with Liz Randone (Annabella Sciorra), whose life he once saved after a car accident. Her rescue cost him the hearing in one ear and made him ineligible to become a New York City cop, as so many of his peers did, including Liz's abusive and unfaithful husband Joey Randone (Peter Berg). One night, Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Michael Rapaport), nephew of Lt. Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel), leaves a bachelor party at Scores in Manhattan, driving over a discarded beer bottle. He's driving across the George Washington Bridge when his car is sideswiped by a couple of African-American teens. Babitch attempts to force them to pull over. The passenger points what Babitch thinks is a weapon and then the front tire of his car suddenly goes flat. Believing they have fired at him, Babitch shoots back. In an ensuing accident, Babitch collides with their car. Both of the teens are dead from the shots Babitch fired. During the ensuing investigation at the scene, Jack Rucker (Robert Patrick) is caught trying to plant a weapon in the teens' vehicle to justify the shooting. One of the paramedics seizes the gun from Rucker and tosses it over the side of the bridge. A brief fight breaks out but is quickly broken up. Worried about the repercussions on his career of having shot unarmed black teens, Babitch is persuaded by Donlan to fake his suicide. During the tussle over the planted gun, Ray pretends that Babitch has jumped off the bridge. Other corrupt police officers, including Detective Leo Crasky (John Spencer) and Frank Lagonda (Arthur Nascarella), fear that Babitch will resurface and testify about their corruption to Internal Affairs. While on radar patrol with his partner Cindy Betts (Janeane Garofalo), Ray zips by their position at about 70 mph. They pull him over, with Ray trying to muscle his way out of a speeding ticket with Betts, saying that he's above receiving a traffic citation. Heflin agrees to let him go but as Ray zooms off, Freddy sees Babitch stick his head up in the back seat. Internal Affairs investigator Lt. Moe Tilden (Robert De Niro) asks if Heflin will provide information on the corrupt cops who live in his town. Heflin is intimidated by the New York City cops and is reluctant to betray them, derailing Tilden's case. Superiors in the department, related to the corrupt cops, order Tilden to shut down the investigation. Although the Babitch cover-up appears to be initially successful, Ray is told by Patrolmen's Defense Association President Vincent Lassaro (Frank Vincent) that without a body, the case will not stay cold. Ray reluctantly decides that his nephew must be killed. During a loud party held by Ray at his house, Babitch is tipped off by his aunt Rose (Cathy Moriarty). Ray, Jack and Frank try to drown Babitch in Ray's hot tub. Babitch, grabbing a pistol he'd hidden in his waistband, fires off several shots just as Joe Randone, arriving at the party late, hears them. Babitch flees in to the night and goes to Freddy's house looking for help, but when he sees Freddy's friend (and fellow NYPD cop) Gary "Figgsy" Figgis (Ray Liotta), he flees. Later at the bar the police all hang out at, Joey disagrees with Ray over his plans to find & eliminate his nephew. Later that evening while on patrol, Joey Randone gets into a fight with a violent suspect and is thrown off a rooftop. While he is clinging to an TV aerial and calling for help. Donlan sees him and, out of payback for Randone carrying on an affair with his wife, closes the door to the building's atrium and deliberately stalls, trying to pick the lock as the other officers arrive to help. By the time the squad gets to the roof, Randone has fallen to his death. When Freddy realizes his mistake, he visits Tilden and is angrily told that the case was blown by his failure to cooperate sooner. As he leaves, Freddy sees a number of NYPD case files on the corrupt cops and steals them. He studies the files and realizes the extent of his friends' corruption. Deputy Cindy Betts decides to leave Garrison, frustrated by the New York City cops having turned the town into their own personal fiefdom. Freddy returns home to find Figgsy packing to leave, not wanting to be further involved. Freddy finds out that Figgsy burned down his own house for the insurance money, accidentally killing his crack-addicted girlfriend Monica (Mel Gorham). Heflin manages to convince Rose to reveal where Babitch is hiding in the town's water tower, then takes him to Garrison's jail. Heflin generously permits Deputy Bill Geisler (Noah Emmerich), who is nervous about protecting Babitch, to go home and take care of his pregnant wife. Heflin attempts to bring Babitch to New York City to turn over to Tilden, but Lagonda, Donlan and Rucker ambush him. Rucker cruelly fires a gun next to Freddy's good ear, deafening and disabling him. Babitch is taken, presumably to be killed. On foot and almost totally deaf, Heflin follows them to Donlan's house, where he quickly gets into a gunfight with Ray's man. Heflin kills both Jack and Frank. Heflin is then shot in the shoulder by Leo Crasky, but is saved by the arrival of Figgsy, who kills Crasky. In the house, Babitch is trying to escape through a window. Donlan sneaks up behind Heflin, but before he can fire, Figgsy shoots. Barely hearing the shot, Heflin turns and shoots. As Donlan lies dying on the floor, he mutters obscenities, to which Heflin replies simply: "I can't hear you, Ray." Figgsy and Heflin personally take Babitch to New York City and to Internal Affairs, refusing to allow any other cop to assist them. Tilden takes their prisoner into custody. After the scandal has been investigated and indictments handed down, Heflin, who has recovered hearing in his good ear, ends up looking at the New York City skyline from across the Hudson River. Deputy Geisler notifies him about a jack-knifed truck and Freddy goes back to work.