Where there's smoke... there's laughter! Departing from the conventions of Hollywood story-telling Smoke is constructed like an emotional jigsaw puzzle: all of it's pieces interweave and interconnect to form an intricate whole. Unrelated characters - a cigar store manager (Harvey Keitel) who has taken photographs in front of his store at the same hour every day for 14 years; a novelist (William Hurt) unable to go on writing after his wife is killed in a random act of street violence; a man (Forest Whitaker) who ran away from his past and tries to start over after accidentally killing his wife. These characters, amongst others, making their way through the lonely urban landscape, might seem to have little in common. But in the couse of this motion picture they cross paths by chance and end up changing each other's lives in indelible ways.