Plot
The film begins with graduate student Teri MacDonald (Helen Hunt) and her work training a chimpanzee named Virgil to use American Sign Language. When her research grant is not renewed, Virgil is taken away. Teri is told that Virgil will be sent to a zoo. Instead, he is taken to an Air Force base to be used in a top-secret research project involving platforms designed to simulate the operation of aircraft.
Airman Jimmy Garrett (Matthew Broderick), as punishment for "misconduct" involving a romantic interlude in an aircraft cockpit, is assigned to the same chimp project to which Virgil was sent. Jimmy begins to bond with Virgil and they become attached to one another. Jimmy discovers that Virgil has been taught sign language. Jimmy informs his superior, Dr. Carroll (William Sadler), but Dr. Carroll is not interested.
Unbeknownst to Jimmy, the chimps trained on the flight simulators will be killed by radiation poisoning. Once they reach a certain level in operating the flight simulator, the chimps will be exposed to a lethal pulse of radiation in the simulator chamber to determine how long a pilot may survive after a nuclear exchange known as the second-strike scenario.
When a dead chimp is removed from the simulator room, Virgil breaks away from Jimmy and escapes to the room adjacent to the vivarium. Virgil sees the dead body, returns to the vivarium, and screeches to the other caged chimps. Jimmy does not know that Virgil is communicating to the others of their impending peril.
Jimmy later becomes aware of the chimps' fate. He searches Virgil's file and phones Teri, who joins Jimmy at the base. Concerned about his military career, Jimmy initially tells Teri that she should not have come and refuses to tell her anymore about Virgil's fate. Later, Jimmy goes to Teri's hotel and finds her just as she is leaving. Teri tells Jimmy she is going to go to Washington to inform the National Science Foundation of the deception. Jimmy tells Teri she does not have enough time because Virgil is scheduled to die soon.
Teri and Jimmy return to the base just as Virgil is set to be placed within the flight simulator chamber and die by radiation poisoning. Jimmy challenges Dr. Carroll, the assembled military guests, and assorted politicians about the value of the project. Jimmy points out that the hypothetical pilot, knowing of the implications of the second-strike scenario, would know he is dying, and would, therefore, be affected by that knowledge. However, the chimps would not have the same awareness; thus, the project is flawed. This enrages Dr. Carroll, who promises Jimmy that his military career is finished.
Meanwhile, in the vivarium, some of the chimps have used a mop to get the keys to open their cages and have stacked crates and boxes in an attempt to escape through a skylight. Jimmy and Teri walk in to see the chimps escaping. Virgil, at the top of the stack, is about to break the skylight with a crowbar when the authorities enter. Goliath the chimp becomes very angry and fights with Dr. Carroll, who has obtained a cattle prod and is attempting to use it to foil the chimps' escape. The authorities are chased from the room. Goliath and Virgil end up in the flight simulator room, and a fire extinguisher is jammed, forcing the radiation generator in an exposed condition, potentially leading to an uncontrolled radiation blast. Jimmy gets Virgil out and a few of the other chimps but Goliath continues smashing the simulator and is caught inside. Jimmy and Virgil convince Goliath to yank out the extinguisher, but Goliath dies from radiation because the chamber cannot be opened until the radiation falls below lethal levels.
Jimmy and Teri steal a military plane to help the chimps escape, but they are stopped by military police. While the police are holding Jimmy and Teri at gunpoint, Virgil pilots the plane, and the chimps fly away. They eventually crash land in the nearby Everglades and evade a search. Just as the search is being abandoned, Jimmy and Teri see Virgil hiding in the bush with his chimpanzee girlfriend. Teri signs to Virgil that he and the others are now "free". The chimps disappear into the Everglades.
Read more about this topic: Project X (1987 film)
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“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no one’s actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Ends in themselves, my letters plot no change;
They carry nothing dutiable; they won’t
Aspire, astound, establish or estrange.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)