mysterious man (Spacey) appears in a beam of light as if out of nowhere in the middle of New York's Grand Central Station. He witnesses a mugging and tries to help. But when the police ask where he's from, he tells them, "Your planet is really bright." On go the cuffs.
Eventually, the man—who calls himself Prot—winds up in the care of psychiatrist Mark Powell (Bridges). Prot insists that he's not of this Earth, but rather a 300-year-old visitor from a planet called K-Pax, in the distant constellation of Lyra, sent here to study human culture. Powell believes Prot is deeply deluded, despite massive doses of Thorazine, and he wants to find out what's behind it.
Prot laughs off Powell's skepticism and eats an apple. "Your produce alone has been worth the trip," he says, munching happily.
Powell, meanwhile, is unaware of his own problems, including a wife, Rachel (Mary McCormack), who is unhappy that the doctor doesn't spend more time with his family. Then there's the inhabitants of Powell's clinic, including obsessive-compulsive Howie (David Patrick Kelly), germophobe Ernie (Saul Williams) and catatonic Bess (Melanee Murray).
Powell finds it difficult to pierce Prot's elaborate delusion, despite his best efforts. He even tries to debunk Prot's description of his home planet and its galactic environs by introducing him to a group of genuine astronomers. But when Prot dazzles them with his knowledge of Lyra and its planetary structure, Powell begins to question whether Prot is who he claims.
The other psychiatric patients have no such doubts. They believe Prot is real, fueled with hope that he will take one of them with him when he leaves for K-Pax. But Powell fears that Prot may do himself harm when that day comes—and he has only a few days to uncover Prot's real secret before the hour arrives.
Putting the alien in alienation
K-Pax, based on the SF novel of the same name by Gene Brewer, is essentially a two-man show, an encounter between the mysterious patient and his troubled shrink. The essential mystery—is Prot really an alien?—gradually gives way to a growing bond between the two men, with Powell learning about himself the more he learns about his charge. At the same time, the strange visitor has a profound effect on all with whom he comes in contact.
In this, K-Pax owes much to earlier films of the genre, notably One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the 1986 Argentine film Hombre Mirando al Sudeste (Man Facing Southeast), whose premise is nearly identical to K-Pax's.
The early parts of the film are the most successful, when the mystery is intact and the story offers up tantalizing bits of evidence—Prot doesn't respond to psychotropic drugs, he can see ultraviolet light, he can outsmart scientific experts. Eventually, though, the movie settles into the obligatory therapy sessions, including hypnotic regression, to peel back the layers of Prot's story, and necessarily lapses into an overly conventional scenario involving Prot's past on its way to an ambiguous ending.
But the cast is first-rate, down to the smallest parts. The aptly named Spacey gives one of those performances that captures the attention of movie critics and academy members, literally chewing on the scenery in parts—watching him eat a banana is a particular treat—regressing into a lisping four-year-old or stalking around the asylum with an unsteady, robotic gait. The actorly performance mostly serves the character and story, at least when it's not too obviously drawing attention to itself.
Perversely, Bridges has the harder job, inhabiting a normal, repressed guy who gradually gets in touch with his own alien-ation. He brings maturity and subtlety to his role.
Softley leaves the movie mainly in the hands of his actors, though he makes good use of light and darkness as the central metaphor for Prot's condition and Powell's eventual epiphany.
