Trama

A Gulf war veteran is wrongly sent to a mental institution for insane criminals, where he becomes the object of a doctor's experiments, and his life is completely affected by them.

The film centers on a wounded Gulf war veteran who returns to his native Vermont suffering from bouts of amnesia. He is hitching and gets picked up by a stranger, things go wrong when a cop pulls them over and is murdered by a stranger. The vet is wrongly accused of the killing and lands in an asylum. A disreputable doctor prescribes a course of experimental therapy, restraining him in a modified strength straight jacket-like device, and locks him away in a cadaver drawer in the basement morgue. During the course of his treatment, he gets flashbacks and visions of his future where he can foresee that he is to die in four days time; He just doesn't know how. And thus commences the classic race against time for this tortured veteran with an expiration date.—Austin4577@aol.com

In 1991, in Iraq, the military Jack Starks is shot in the head and presumed dead. When he blinks his eyes in the morgue, the doctor is called. One year later, after being discharged from the army, while hitchhiking in a road in Vermont having amnesia problem, he helps a drunken woman, Jean Price, and her daughter, Jackie Price, fixing their car. Later, he gets a lift, but the driver is stopped by the police and kills the policeman with three shots. Jack is also shot in the head and incriminated by the real killer, who leaves his gun close to the fainted Jack. He goes to court and is sentenced to the mental institution Alpine Grove for insane criminals. Jack becomes the experiment of Dr. Thomas Becker, who drugs and dresses him with a jacket and lock him in a drawer for corpses in the morgue. While locked, Jack travels to 2007, where he meets a grown-up Jackie Price and they fall in love for each other. Jack envisions that the only exit from the institution is through the jacket.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Jack Starks served in Iraq in 1991. During a routine inspection of a village, a young boy was separated from the main group of detainees. Starks goes to round up the boy, but as he approaches, the boy pulls out a firearm and shoots Starks straight in the head. Starks is brought to a field hospital, presumed to be dead. But he opens his eyes, and the doctors realize that he is alive. After miraculously recovering from a bullet wound to the head, Gulf War veteran Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) returns to Vermont in 1992, suffering from periods of amnesia.

While walking, he sees a young girl, Jackie (Laura Marano), and her alcoholic mother Jean (Kelly Lynch) in despair beside their broken-down truck. Starks and Jackie quickly form a certain affinity; she asks him to give her his dog tags and he does so. He gets the truck started for them and continues on his way.

Shortly after, a man driving along the same highway gives Jack a ride and they get pulled over by a policeman. The scene changes: Starks is found lying on the deserted roadside near the dead policeman, with a slug from the policeman's gun in his body. The murder weapon is on the ground nearby. As Starks recounts the events of that day in court, the lawyer comments that there was no physical evidence found that proved the existence of Jackie and Jean. Although Starks testifies there was someone else at the scene, he is not believed because of his amnesia.

Starks is found not guilty by reason of insanity and is incarcerated in a mental institution at Alpine Grove. Starks is placed in the care of Dr. Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson), a psychiatrist, and his staff.

In December 1992 Starks is forced to undergo an unauthorized treatment designed by Becker: he is injected with experimental drugs, bound in a straitjacket and then placed inside a morgue drawer as a form of sensory deprivation. The first time he is subjected to this treatment, Starks struggles for a while inside the drawer but becomes almost catatonic after 3 hours of being inside. Thomas is astounded that Starks did not lose consciousness.

Rudy Mackenzie (Daniel Craig) was in the asylum for trying to kill his wife almost 30 times. Rudy befriends Starks. Dr Beth Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is another psychiatrist who does not know about the treatments that Thomas is subjecting his patients to.

The next time, Starks attacks Thomas, and this time he puts Starks inside the drawer without a tranquilizer. While in this condition, Starks is somehow able to travel 15 years into the future and stay there for a short time.

Starks meets an older version of Jackie (Keira Knightley) at a roadside diner where she works. He suspects this happens because it is the only memory he can ever fully hold on to. Seeing him standing forlornly, she takes pity on him and offers him shelter at her apartment, just for the night. Jackie tries to get him a public shelter, but it is Christmas Eve, and all the shelters are full. As a way of saying thanks, Starks makes a sandwich for Jackie.

While in her apartment, Starks comes across his own dog tags and also photos of the young Jackie and her mother whom Starks met years ago. Starks is astounded and confronts Jackie. Jackie says that Jean passed out with a cigarette and burned to death a long time ago. Jackie tells Starks that it is 2007 now. Jackie tells him that Jack Starks died on New Year's Day in 1993 in Alpine Grove, and so he cannot possibly be who he says he is. She becomes upset and asks him to leave.

Starks wakes up back in the drawer and Thomas realizes that Starks had been left inside the entire night. Beth notices bruise marks on Starks' body and confronts Thomas. Beth knows that Thomas is putting patients at risk to test his new treatments, and it emerges that another patient previously lost his life on account of this. Thomas has a chat with Starks and reveals that he reserves his treatment for the most heinous criminals who go unpunished in courts due to their insanity plea. He says that the previous patient had sexually assaulted and killed a little girl, and then climbed a tree and howled like an animal.

Subsequently, Starks is transported back to the future on several occasions in the course of his treatment and, after earning Jackie's trust, they try to figure out how to make use of the time-travelling so as to remove Jack from the hospital and save his life.

Early on 1 January 1993, knowing his time is fast running out, Starks slips out of the hospital and travels to the home of Jackie and her mother. He gives the mother a letter he has written, which outlines Jackie's bleak future and warns the mother that she is fated to orphan Jackie when she falls asleep with a cigarette and is burned to death. When he returns to the hospital, Starks slips on ice and hits his head; bleeding profusely, he convinces two of the more sympathetic doctors to put him into the jacket one last time.

Starks returns to 2007, where he finds that his letter has made all the difference. Jackie now has a better life than in the previous version of 2007 - no longer a waitress, she's dressed in a nurse's uniform and has a noticeably more cheerful outlook. They reprise their first 2007 meeting: she sees Starks standing in the snow and initially drives past him but backs up when she notices his head wound. She stops and offers to take him to the hospital where she works. While they are in the car, Jackie receives a call from her mother - still alive and well. They drive on, the screen fades to white, and a voice-over reveals that the link to the "previous" future is not lost when Jackie says, "How much time do we have?", a question she has asked him before.

The answer to the question is given by the words of the song: "We have all the time in the world".