Zach Riley (Aaron Eckhart) is a psychiatrist, who leaves a job at a prestigious university, to take up a job at the privately run mental institution, 'Millwood'. What he doesnt reveal at the time of his appointment is that this was the very place where his novelist father, T.L. Pierson (Nick Nolte), spent many years of his life.
This is the kind of movie where a madwoman's outburst leads her to throw a mug that just happens to be filled with gold sparkles -- which can then be photographed cascading down on all the adorable loonies, in slow-motion.