Robert Redford

Fonda and Redford star as Addie Moore and Louis Waters, a widow and widower who've lived next to each other for years. The pair have almost no relationship, but that all changes when Addie tries to make a connection with her neighbor. In Holt, a small Colorado town, Addie Moore (Jane Fonda) pays an unexpected visit to a neighbor, Louis Waters (Robert Redford). Her husband died years ago, as did his wife, and in such a small town they'd been neighbors for decades, but had little contact. Their children (Matthias Schoenaerts and Judy Greer) live far away and they are all alone in their big houses. Addie seeks to establish a connection, and make the most of the rest of the time they have.

An interviewer (Mary Steenburgen) questions Thomas Harbor (Robert Redford), the man who scientifically proved the existence of an afterlife, a discovery that has led to an extremely high suicide rate. The interviewer asks Harbor if he feels responsible, and he says no. Directly after, a member of the crew kills himself on air. On the two year anniversary of the discovery, Harbor's son Will (Jason Segel) travels on a ferry where he meets Isla (Rooney Mara). They have a conversation and Will notes Isla looks very familiar. He says he is upset that people keep killing themselves, while Isla thinks it's an easy way out. Will also shares a memory he had while being dead for a minute, where he saw a young boy at a beach. Will is picked up by his brother Toby (Jesse Plemons), who drives him to an isolated mansion where their father has built up his new station. Will notes people working for him, and Toby says they all attempted suicide. They enter a room where Will meets Lacey (Riley Keough) and Cooper (Ron Canada), and sees his father tied up to a machine as they kill and revive him. Will blames him for the high suicide rate. Later, Will sees Isla on the beach as she walks into the water with a backpack loaded down by a gym weight. He runs after, barely saving her. He brings her to the mansion, where she is taken in. At a later meeting with the occupants, Thomas reveals he invented a machine that can record what dead people see in the afterlife, which requires a dead person, and they steal the corpse of Pat Phillips (Paul Bellefeuille) from the morgue. Will reveals to Isla that his mother killed herself when he was younger. The next day, they try to record the afterlife but nothing happens. After the failed attempt, Will enters the room alone and puts back a piece of wiring he took out of the machine, which then shows a sequence of Pat Phillips driving to a hospital, visiting someone and fighting with a woman there. Will finds the hospital from the recording online and visits it, but finds that the hallway from the video is gone after remodeling a decade prior. Later, during a meeting, Thomas brings Lacey on stage and confronts her about telling other people in the mansion about the failed device and tells her to leave immediately. Will drives Isla to the hospital and shows her the recording and tells her that he thinks the device records memory rather than the afterlife. After breaking into the hospital, they find a file from Pat Phillips' father, who died in the hospital. Isla finds out that the man in the recording has a different tattoo from the one she saw on Pat earlier. Will drives her to the beach, where she reveals to him that she had a son and that he died while she was asleep. Later they seek out the woman from the video, revealed to be Pat's sister Janice (M.J. Karmi). She tells them that Pat left her alone with their dying father and that he never visited him in the hospital. Isla and Will grow closer together and share a kiss, which is interrupted by Toby. Together they rush to Thomas, who is hooked up on the machine and dead. They observe that he is seeing the night their mother killed herself, except that Thomas stops her. They are able to revive Thomas, who concludes that the afterlife is an alternate version of their existing life, only with different choices made. They agree to destroy the machine, as this revelation would provoke millions of suicides by people wanting to improve the lives they have. Thomas prepares to hold a speech, which is interrupted by Lacey shooting Isla, claiming she has just "relocated" her. Isla dies in Will's arms. Later, a devastated Will hooks himself up with the machine. He arrives back on the ferry, where he meets Isla again, who states that this is a memory. It is revealed that Will is living in a memory loop trying to prevent Isla's death and that he restarts on the ferry every time. Isla says that he saved her and that they both will move on now. Although Toby and Thomas try to revive Will, he dies, promising Isla to remember her. Will stands on the beach, where he sees a little boy and gets him out of the water. The little boy's mother, Isla, arrives and thanks Will. They don't recognize each other. After she leaves, he walks away, but starting to recall who Isla is, he slowly stops and looks back.

Lieutenant General Eugene Irwin (Robert Redford) is brought to a maximum-security military prison to begin a ten-year sentence for his decision (in violation of a presidential order) to send U.S. troops on a mission in Burundi, resulting in the deaths of eight soldiers. Irwin walks about how castles have not changed in 1000 years in their role on the battlefield. They sit on high ground and command a territory as far as the eye can see, they have big walls for protection and strong enough to withstand a frontal attack and has a garrison of men who are trained and willing to kill. Finally, a castle has a flag, and that flag belongs to the soldiers of the castle. Nobody takes the flag, but the garrison of the castle. When the flag flies high, the castle is complete. Irwin compares the prison to a castle that is designed to keep people in. Colonel Winter (James Gandolfini), the prison's commandant, is a great admirer of the general but is offended by a comment by Irwin that he overhears. Irwin criticizes Winter's much-prized military artifacts collection, saying that the used bullets from the Civil War it includes is something no combat veteran - such as Irwin - would ever have. Colonel Winter, who has never seen combat in his career, quickly resents what he perceives as Irwin's attempt to change the attitude of the prisoners, and his admiration and respect of Irwin fades fast. A tenet of Winter's methods for running the prison is that the prisoners are no longer soldiers and therefore should not follow military customs and courtesies. Irwin notices that Winter instructs his guards not to intervene when a fight breaks out in the common outside area among inmates. Then, non-lethal force is used in the form of rubber bullets to bring the inmates under control. Irwin is assigned to laundry duty. There are specific gangs of inmates who protect their own turf. A "white" gang works on the prison wall and doesn't allow anyone to touch it. The inmates complain to Irwin that Winter instigates violence, uses extreme force and then only provide basic medical treatment. There have been 13 critical injuries in the last 11 months. Twice inmates have been hit in the head with rubber bullets and killed. Irwin is only ever visited by his daughter Rosalie (Robin Wright). On one occasion, Irwin is punished harshly after stopping a guard from clubbing a prisoner, Corporal Ramon Aguilar (Clifton Collins Jr.), who had made the mistake of saluting Irwin in the prison yard. Continuing to observe acts of cruelty, Irwin attempts to unify the prisoners by building a "castle wall" of stone and mortar at the facility, which in many ways resembles a medieval castle. Envying the respect Irwin is clearly receiving, Winter orders his guards to destroy the wall. Aguilar, directly involved in the building of the wall, takes a stand before the bulldozer. Winter orders a sharpshooter to fire a normally non-lethal rubber bullet directly at Aguilar's head, killing him. After the wall is destroyed, Irwin and the inmates pay final respects to Aguilar in formation. Colonel Winter later tries to make amends with Irwin, but Irwin calls him a disgrace to the uniform and demands his resignation. The prisoners begin to behave like soldiers around Irwin, using code words and gestures, infuriating the commandant. Winter reaches out to an anti-social prisoner named Yates (Mark Ruffalo), a former officer and Apache pilot convicted of running a drug smuggling ring, bribing him to inform about Irwin's plans in exchange for a reduced sentence. Irwin organizes a plot to throw the prison into chaos. His intent is to show a friend, Brigadier General Wheeler (Delroy Lindo), the commandant's superior officer, that the commandant is unfit and should be removed from command under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. During a visit by General Wheeler to the prison, Winter receives a letter threatening the kidnapping of Wheeler by the prisoners. After ordering his men into action, Winter discovers that the kidnap scheme was a fake. Irwin orchestrated it as a way to detect how prison guards would react during an actual uprising. Wheeler offers to transfer Irwin to another prison but Winter declines. Yates tells Winter that Irwin intends to take over the prison, then raise the flag upside down to signal distress. Yates becomes the key to their plan, tasked with stealing a U.S. flag from the warden's office, revealing that he is on Irwin's side and seizing a Bell UH-1 helicopter used by guards. Winter orders all the prisoners to the yard in an attempt to prevent their plot, but Irwin anticipated this and a prisoner uprising commences. Using improvised weapons (some resembling medieval ones) and the tactics of a military unit, the prisoners capture an armored vehicle and the helicopter. The prisoners place a call to Wheeler's headquarters and inform him of the riot. Winter has little time to regain control before Wheeler can arrive to see the prison under siege. He orders the use of live ammunition against the prisoners. He also knows from Yates that Irwin's ultimate goal is to raise the American flag upside down, a classic signal of distress. Irwin's men create havoc but ultimately are confronted with overwhelming numbers of guards, all armed with live ammunition in their weapons. Knowing further resistance would only mean a massacre, Irwin orders the prisoners to stand down. Despite Winter having successfully halted the uprising with the threat of overwhelming force, Irwin elects to hoist the flag personally. Winter then tells Irwin to return his flag but Irwin replies "It's not your flag". Irwin begins walking toward the flagpole to raise it. An increasingly unsettled Winter tells Irwin, "You will not raise that flag upside down," but Irwin continues walking toward the flagpole. Colonel Winter orders his men to open fire on Irwin, but they refuse to do so on the orders of Winter's second-in-command, Captain Peretz (Steve Burton). The colonel cannot persuade anyone else to follow his command, so he proceeds to shoot Irwin fatally himself. Peretz places the commandant under arrest. The prisoners salute the flag, and Winter now sees that Irwin has actually raised the U.S. flag in the correct manner, meaning he shot Irwin for no reason. It flies above the prison's walls as Brigadier General Wheeler arrives and Colonel Winter is led away in handcuffs. The story ends with the inmates building a new wall as memorial to their fallen comrades. Aguilar's and Irwin's names are among those carved onto the castle wall.