In 1991, U.S. Marine Sergeant Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) received a gunshot wound to the head while serving in the Persian Gulf War. The trauma of the near-fatal shooting caused Starks to develop shock-related amnesia. After his release from the Gulf, Starks, who has no relatives and nowhere to go, returns to his native Vermont.
Nine months later, Starks is found hitchhiking along a Vermont highway in the snow. During this trek through the snowy highway, Starks comes across a broken down pick-up truck with the driver and her daughter stranded at the side of the road. With the mother Jean too drunk and disoriented to speak with him, Starks instead offers his help to her eight-year-old daughter Jackie.
Starks gets their truck started and then continues hitchhiking. A young man in a station wagon bound for the Canadian Border soon picks him up but the car is then pulled over by the police. Starks mysteriously blacks out and, when he wakes up, he finds himself on trial for the murder of the police officer.
Starks is committed to the state mental institution, Alpine Grove, after he is found not guilty of the murder by reason of insanity. At Alpine Grove, Starks is subjected to an experimental treatment developed and executed by a staff physician, Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson). Through the treatment, which involves mind-altering drugs and claustrophobic physical restraint, Starks is wrapped in jacket-like restraints and locked in a corpse drawer.
The medicated Starks is left alone and tied up in the hospital’s basement morgue for hours at a time. While locked up in the drawer, Starks begins to experience flashes of memory from the Gulf War as well as memories of the shooting of the police officer. As he is locked up he begins to put together the scrambled puzzles of his past memories.
Starks’ visions of the past begin to give way to visions of the future when he is suddenly transported to a diner in Vermont. At the diner he meets Jackie (Keira Knightley), a waitress at the Vermont diner. She takes pity on him and tries to help him find a place to stay overnight. Since it is Christmas Eve and all the homeless shelters are full, Jackie allows Starks to sleep on her couch.
During this time, Starks begins to realize that the drawer he’s been confined to can lead to his recovery and that his future and well-being may lie in the hands Jackie. Starks believes that, if he and Jackie cannot find a way to save him from his fate, he may be destined to die in four days.
