The life of St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) as related by followers who gather after his death to tell stories so that Leone can record them: a privileged and virile youth, a prisoner of war, an heir who turns away from his father and gives all to the poor, a beggar for others, and an inspiration to friends who accept the Gospels' life of poverty.

What begins as an innocent art class becomes a steamy triangle of erotic passions and forbidden love. A beautiful Japanese girl becomes the object of obsession in a devious relationship between the wife of a German diplomat and her husband.

A reporter and her cameraman connect a surviving Jonestown leader and a TV exec's missing son to a drug war where jungle installations are being massacred by an army of natives and a skilled white assassin.