The film opens with a bombing of a television sales shop. We learn there have been terrorist bombings throughout the city to oppose the Ministry of Information. We see a man in what looks like a printing lab kill a bug and the name on the forms that are being typed up changes from “Tuttle” to “Buttle.” A family watching Tiny Tim give his Christmas speech has men in black blow through the ceiling and take the father captive. He is Mr. Buttle, the man who the mistake has happened to in the printing lab. They haul him off leaving everyone in disbelief. The neighbor upstairs tells the men that they’ve made a mistake with the man’s name to which the workers reply, “Mistake? We don’t make mistakes.”
Inside a factory workers are busy until Mr. Kurtzmann steps into his office at the Ministry of Information and they all gather around their mini televisions. Every time he comes out they are back to work and every time he goes inside his office they watch tv. Kurtzmann calls for Sam Lowry who hasn’t woken up yet because his alarm clock didn’t go off. He was dreaming of flying through the clouds with a woman. He gets to work at the Ministry of Information and see on one of the televisions the woman from his dream. We then see the neighbor from earlier present a form for a wrongful arrest. Later Lowry sees that there was a mistake with Buttle, but states that it isn’t their departments mistake, it was Information Retrievals fault. Lowry then learns that he’s been given a promotion because of his mother pulling strings. This upsets him and he goes to his mother to tell her to stop helping him.
Lowry is then taken to lunch with his mother’s friend and daughter and he can’t get a word in. While at lunch a bomb goes off, but people carry on like nothing has happened. The musicians continue to play and everyone continues to have lunch while firefighter come to douse the fire. Sam then leaves the table saying he wants nothing, not even dreams, and we are thrust into his flying dream but this time the land explodes and the woman is overwhelmed by the eruption. Sam awakens to his apartment smoking from his air conditioning. He calls Central Services for help but only gets a recording.
Lowry falls asleep in his refrigerator and wakes up to a masked man pointing a gun at him. We learn he is there to help fix his air conditioner. He tells Sam his name is Harry Tuttle and he isn’t officially working with Central Services, and once he learns this the real Central Services shows up and wants to go in but when Lowry asks for the proper paperwork he is able to get the men to leave before Tuttle shoots them. Lowry then pieces together that Harry is the Tuttle they are looking for.
Back at the Ministry of Information Lowry figures out that Buttle is dead with Kurtzmann. The anxiety is not that Buttle has been killed but that there is a refund check Kurtzmann doesn’t know what to do with and needs to get rid of it. Sam takes action and instead of Kurtzmann having to deal with it he does it for him. Sam goes to the Buttle home where Mrs. Buttle knows her husband is dead and the son attacks Sam. Once the altercations ends Sam sees the woman from upstairs and realizes it’s the same woman from his dream. He finds out her name from the little girl in the street. Her name is Jill Layton, but he can’t get information on her back at work because her file is classified. The only way to get the information is to take the promotion his mother got for him, but Kurtzmann has signed his form stating he doesn’t want the promotion.
Sam comes home to find Central Services men have ripped his apartment apart and discovered that someone has fixed his air conditioner for him. They leave him with his apartment ripped apart. In Sam’s dream world we see him fight a giant samurai to free Jill and other people who have been enslaved. He kills the samurai and unmasks him to find that it is him. He awakens to a awfully sung telegram to be invited to his mother’s party where he is assaulted at her door because once again no one knows who he is. At the party he is able to get the promotion from Mr. Helpmann in order to get access to Jill’s classified file.
Once on the inside he learns that Jack, who he knows, is the man who killed Buttle and Jill is being sent up to him. Sam convinces Jack to let him be the one to get information from Jill and he agrees. On his way to his office he see Jill in the entrance to the Ministry of Information and takes her with him outside and gets into her truck and has to convince her to drive off, but she soon kicks him out but he refuses to let go and she takes him with her. Sam begins to believe that she is going to commit a terrorist bombing, but when a bomb goes off in a store she is hurt as well and the package she thinks is a bomb isn’t a bomb. It’s a bribe for Information Officials. Jill and Sam are taken in by Ministry Officers and Jill is detained and Sam isn’t allowed to see her.
Sam later runs into Jill at the Ministry as Sam begins to go on his quest to end this madness of society, and he goes straight to the top to see Mr. Helpmann. When he arrives he sees a picture of his mother on her desk, and is able to delete Jill Layton from the computer system making her dead in the world. The two then make love before we see Sam flying with Jill in his arms in his dream. He awakens and she is with him the next morning, but the ministry busts through and takes them prisoner. He’s told that Jill is dead. He is about to be tortured by Jack before Harry kills Jack and gets Sam free. Sam is then chased through the city to a funeral. The funeral is for his mother. Then he breaks free and is taken away by Jill in her truck and the two ride into the sunset. Finally, he snaps back to reality and we see that Jack and Mr. Helpmann have been torturing him so much that he has lost his mind.
