Amarkant Varma (Shahrukh Khan) is a program executive for All India Radio, dispatched from New Delhi to cover festivities in Assam. On his way there, during a rainy night, Amar stops at Haflong train station to catch the Barak Valley Express. As he waits, he tries to have a smoke and asks a mysterious person for either a match or a lighter. Suddenly a strong gust of wind blows the shawl off the person, revealing it to be woman (Manisha Koirala). Amar finds her very attractive and tries to strike up a conversation, but she ignores him for a bit and then asks him for a cup of tea. When he returns with the tea, he watches as she boards the next train with three male passengers and rides off into the distance.

The film opens with the birth of Baba (Rajinikanth), who is a ‘baba amsa sambhootudu’. Baba grows up as an atheist and hot-blooded man, but he is a Good Samaritan. His lifestyle includes consuming alcohol, smoking substances, and chewing tobacco. His mother (Sujatha) and maternal uncle (M. N. Nambiar) are ardent devotees of Mahavatar Babaji (the Mahaavtar Baba who is supposed to be 2000 years old and who lives in the Himalayas). Chamundeswari (Manisha Koirala) stays in the neighborhood of Baba’s residence who often quarrels with Baba but eventually falls in love with his style and falls for his attitude.

The State’s Chief Minister, after being questioned by a reporter, Pugazhendi, challenges him to accept the position for a day, and see for himself the challenges that face him. Pugazhendi accepts the challenge, and immediately sets about to tour the region, suspend and prosecute corrupt officials, arrest several politicians, including the Chief Minister himself, and makes swift and decisive changes that will go to assist the most vulnerable, much to the chagrin of people in power.. After the day is over, Pugazhendi will find his and his loved ones’ lives in danger as the state’s machinery, as well as goons, gather together to extract vengeance.

The film, however, follows familiar pattern of Spanish original, wherein a corpse mysteriously disappears from the city morgue. This leads to summoning of police officer to investigate the case of missing body. As usual needle of suspicion falls on woman’s husband. While Spanish film is noir genre cinema, Ramesh’s Game with its taut and gripping screenplay, is aptly tailored to suit the Indian audience’s palate. How, no-nonsense, smart cop Sharath Chandra unravels the truth; whether high profile lady Maya, has been murdered, is it a case of catalepsy, or case of drunken driving, hit and run, behind it, forms the fulcrum of eerie and edgy Game set in specially constructed forensic lab.

Three amateur thieves plot to kidnap the young son of wealthy Chettiar (Santhana Bharathi) from school. They do a trial run. However, on the eve of the kidnap, the guy whose job is to operate a crane in this plan is hospitalized. The services of Avinasi a.k.a. Mumbai Xpress (Kamal Haasan), brother of Kovai Sarala, a deaf stuntman performing daredevil bike acts, is roped in. Twists and turns take place where the other two gang members are hurt, and invariably, our Mumbai Xpress is left to perform the task all by himself. He kidnaps a wrong boy Daddu (Hardhik), the illegitimate son of Ahalya (Manisha Koirala) and police officer Rao (Nassar), but manages to get a huge ransom from Chettiar by default. A brawl takes place between the original kidnap planners – Chidambaram (Pasupathy), Johnson (Vaiyapuri), and Avinasi – in handling Ahalya’s child, but Avinasi delivers the child unhurt to his mother.

Son-in-law makes an attempt to change his mother-in-law’s character to make her to feel that his love is towards her daughter not on her property.

Nandu and Vijay are brothers, who were abused by their stepmother during their younger days. Nandhu, who is mentally ill, decides to kill Vijay’s fiancee as he visualizes her as his stepmother.

A veteran freedom fighter named Senapathy learns a rare form of martial art that enables him to kill anyone with his bare hands. He uses that to end crime and punishes the culprits on his own.

Chandrakant ‘Chandu’ Nagre joins the world of crime in the Mumbai underworld. Gradually he learns the tricks of the trade and increases the gang’s earnings and profits. This leads to his affinity with Malik, the leader of the gang. Later, Malik and Chandu kill Saeed and his brother Anis in the rear seat of the car on a chilling rainy day. Thereafter Malik goes on a bloody rampage killing all his opponents to take the reins of underworld in his hands. His rival gang leader and colleague under Aslam’s umbrella Sharma, who was in a meeting with police inspector Rathod, is killed off. Inspector Rathod, who once tortured and abused Chandu in jail in early days, is killed at Malik’s permission. However both come at loggerheads during the execution of a contract killing. Chandu stops the deliberate vehicle crash and falls from Malik’s favor.

Based on true incidents, a south Indian Hindu man falls in love with a Muslim woman–taboo in the small village from which they hail. They marry against family wishes and move to Mumbai, where he works as a reporter for a large daily newspaper. Eventually, the couple has twin boys. The rest of the film is set during the December 1992-January 1993 period when the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid controversy raised religious tension in Mumbai and other parts of India, which sparked rioting and violence. The couple is separated from their children, and the fathers of both parents are killed when their home is burned by rioters. A reporter is shown interviewing politicians from both factions as well as the police. An underlying moral of thinking of oneself as an Indian rather than a Hindu or a Muslim is prevalent throughout the latter part of the film. The family is finally reunited after much searching through hospitals, morgues, and shelters.