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It's been a long and hard life for death-row inmate Lee Ray Oliver (Ray Liotta), and by the time he's strapped to the gurney to be executed by lethal injection, his death sentence seems more like sweet release than ultimate punishment for a lifetime of crime. Awakening stunned and confused after being pronounced deceased by the prison doctor, Lee Ray is given a second chance at life on the one condition that he take part in a secret experimental treatment designed by revolutionary scientist Dr. Miles Copeland (Willem Dafoe) to cure him of his criminal instinct once and for all. He is granted a new name and new hope when the treatment works -- permanently -- but soon the past returns to haunt him in the form of several old enemies, and then shady government officials crop up to terminate Copeland's program.