In New York, racist Capt. Stanley White becomes obsessed with destroying a Chinese-American drug ring run by Joey Tai, an up-and-coming young gangster as ambitious as he is ruthless. While pursuing an unauthorized investigation, White grows increasingly willing to violate police protocol, resorting to progressively violent measures -- even as his concerned wife, Connie, and his superiors beg him to consider the consequences of his actions.

This film is made up of three segments that share no plot but have a general thematic relationship. In the first segment, Virginia and her three children are left by her shiftless husband and she is courted by an old beau who is now divorced. In the second, a divorced woman reacts to some unexpected revelations from her aged father. In the third, a childless, middle-aged social worker is swept into an affair with a young cab driver and finds herself pregnant.

A Marine unit on a Japanese-held island in the Philippines tries to hook up with local Filipino guerrillas.

A dramatized account of how the staff of the Canadian Embassy helped a group of American diplomats escape from Iran during the Iranian Revolution.