MAX Cohen is a troubled genius. Living a life of paranoid semi-seclusion behind a profusion of mortice locks, he is deeply involved in finding patterns in chaos. His ultimate aim is to decode the pattern of the stock market, as he has decided that mathematics and nature are inextricably bound together, and that if everything in nature can be perceived in numerical terms, it can also form part of a pattern.

There are many factors working against him: the fact that staring into the sun as a child has left him with recurring headaches and other physical ailments, and that these and his overwhelming urge to crack the code are taking him to the brink of madness; ants have got into his computer, and are messing with the system; and his brain is in demand by Wall Street brokers looking for a fortune and Hasidic Jews looking for God.

With pounding and swirling music, sweeping angles, repeated images and sounds, and constant counting and establishing of time, we are sucked into the pattern of the film itself, while chaos surrounds us. Like Max, we know the pattern is there, if only we can work it out. Like Max, we know that time is running out. A breathless and gripping journey into the darker recesses of the mind.