Jacob's Ladder film: Encyclopedia II - Jacob's Ladder film - Plot summary

Jacob's Ladder film - Plot summary

The film opens in October of 1971. Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is an American soldier in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. Helicopters pass overhead, spraying a strange mist over the treetops. Without any warning, Jacob's unit is ambushed and the soldiers try to take cover, but the battalion begins to exhibit strange behavior for no apparent reason. Jacob tries to escape the unexplained insanity, only to be stabbed with a bayoneted rifle by an unseen enemy.

The film shifts between Vietnam, to Jacob's memories of his son Gabriel (Macaulay Culkin) and former wife Sarah, to his present relationship with a woman named Jezebel (Elizabeth Peña) in New York. During this time, Jacob faces several threats to his life and has several hallucinatory experiences. It is revealed that his son Gabriel was hit by a car and killed before Jacob went to Vietnam.

As the hallucinations become increasingly bizarre, Jacob learns about chemical experiments performed on U.S. soldiers in Vietnam. He is approached by a man named Michael Newman (Matt Craven), who claims to have been a chemist working with the Army's chemical warfare division in Saigon. His project worked on creating a drug that increased aggression in soldiers. Human tests of the drug (code-named "the ladder") were given to a group of Viet Cong POWs and later, to Jacob's unit. However, instead of targeting the enemy, the men in Jacob's battalion attacked each other.

Jacob's friend and chiropractor Louis (Danny Aiello) states the main thematic point of the film: in effect, hell is really purgatory, and those who are ready to let go of their lives do not find the experience 'hellish'.

We finally learn that Jacob never made it out of Vietnam; the entire series of experiences turns out to have been a dying hallucination. Jacob's experiences appear to have been a form of purgation in which he releases himself from his earthly attachments, finally joining his dead son Gabriel to ascend a staircase toward a bright light.

At the end of the film, a message states that the U.S. Army allegedly experimented with a hallucinogenic drug called BZ, but the Pentagon denies it.

Tagline: The most frightening thing about Jacob Singer's nightmare is that he isn't dreaming.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Plot summary", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki