Two boys, Ellis and his best friend Neckbone, find a mysterious man named Mud hiding out on a deserted island in the Mississippi. Mud tells the boys fantastic stories about his life, including how he killed a man in Texas and vengeful bounty hunters are coming to get him. He says he is planning to meet and escape with the love of his life, Juniper. The boys agree to help him, but it isn't long until their small town is besieged by bounty hunters out...

In 1970, Vietnam vet Stephen (Costner) is released from a VA hospital where he had been under treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. Returning to his small Mississippi town and loving wife (Winningham), he tries to make something of himself while sharing his new nonviolent credo with his volatile son Stuart (Wood) and trying to forgive himself for what he considers an act of cowardice - allowing a friend to die in combat. Stuart and his friends...

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake Brigance into a conflict that raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it...