The protagonist, Jacob, is a Vietnam veteran whose war experiences result in strange, fragmentary flashbacks and bizarre hallucinations that continue to haunt him throughout the movie.
Jacob (Tim Robbins) desperately attempts to figure out what is real and what is not.
The movie features tons of disturbing imagery as Jacob desperately attempts to figure out what is real and what is not. Most memorable are the scenes in which the director Adrian Lyne used a film technique in which an actor is recorded waving his head and body around at a low frame rate, resulting in purely sinister nightmares when played back at normal speeds.