The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, consisting of eight men, arrive in Israel from Egypt. They have been booked by an Arab cultural center in Petah Tiqva, but through a miscommunication (Arabic has no "p" sound, and regularly replaces it with "b"), the band takes a bus to Bet Hatikva, a fictional town in the middle of the Negev Desert. There is no transportation out of the city that day, and there are no hotels for them to spend the night in. The band members dine at a small restaurant where the owner, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) invites them to stay the night at her apartment, at her friends' apartment, and in the restaurant. That night challenges all of the characters.
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The film is a debate with Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, which Wilton is seen reading early on, identifying him with the anti-hero Raskolnikov.  That character is a brooding loner who kills an old woman to prove that he is a superior being, but is racked by guilt and eventually admits all to a dogged sleuth, and he is finally redeemed by punishment, the love of a poor girl, and the discovery of God. Wilton is a brooding loner who kills a poor girl who loves him because he considers his interests superior to those around him, knows little guilt, and avoids detection through luck. Allen signals his intentions with more superficial similarities: both killers attempt to cover their crime by faking a robbery, both are almost caught by a painter's unexpected appearance in the stairwell, and both sleuths play cat and mouse with the suspect. Allen argues, unlike Dostoevsky, that there is neither God, nor punishment, nor love to provide redemption.

Allen revisits some of the themes he had explored in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), such as the existence of justice in the universe. Both films feature a murder of an unwanted mistress "offer a depressing view on fate, fidelity, and the nature of man". That film’s protagonist, Judah Rosenthal, is an affluent member of the upper-middle class having an extramarital affair. After he threatens to break the affair off, his mistress blackmails him and threatens to go to his wife. Soon, Rosenthal decides to murder his mistress but is distressed at the evil of the killing. Philip French compared the two films' plots and themes in The Observer, and characterised Match Point's as a "clever twist on the themes of chance and fate".
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Mediterraneo is an Italian film that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1991. The film is set during World War II, and regards a group of Italian soldiers who become stranded on a Greek island and are left behind by the war.

The film is accompanied by quoting a phrase of Henri Laborit ("In times like these, escape is the only way to stay alive and continue dreaming") and closes with a caption significant and emblematic: "Dedicated to all those who are running away ".

Cassini Earth photos