A judge gives con-man Tom Turner a choice—a jail sentence, or a year of honest work. But when he gets a job in the U.S. Post Office's dead letter office, he starts a Good Samaritan con by answering letters written to God. His seemingly virtuous work inspires his co-workers to do the same, but their good deeds are frowned upon by the postmaster general—and the cops.

A Palestinian filmmaker is writing a script in his New York apartment during the first Gulf war. As much as he tries to shut himself off from the exterior world, images of past wars in the Middle East come back to haunt him.