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| Jacket, The |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 102 |
| Public Rating: 8.89 (9 votes) |
Director: John Maybury |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 2005 |
| Writer(s): Tom Bleecker, Mark Rocco and Massy Tadjedin |
| Distributor: Warner Independent Pictures & Mandalay Pictures |
| Reviewed by: Scott S. |
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When Gulf War veteran Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) describes his 1991 tour in Iraq with "that was the first time I died" in the opening scene, we immediately expect the worst from this movie; a plastered collage of knee-jerk jump cuts, false pretenses and unforeseeable plot-twists. But to my delight, John Maybury's "The Jacket" is an honest addition to the mind-trick genre, a movie that handles the "what if" parallel-universe theory with discipline, unlike the jumbled Ashton Kutcher flick The Butterfly Effect.
Thought to be deceased, Jack wakes up from a state of shock with a bodytag already stapled to his foot in the mobile hospital tent he was taken to after sustaining a pretty nasty gunshot wound to the head. He's revived, released and sent on his way back home leaving him with no memory of the near-death assault.
On his walk to nowhere through the bitter cold he comes across a young girl named Jackie and her inebriated mother, stranded on the side of the road after their truck breaks down. He quickly helps them out, gives young Jackie his dogtags and walks off never expecting to see them again.
Soon thereafter he hitches a ride from the worst possible person to run into, and after one event leads to another he finds himself charged with the murder of a state police officer. Just one problem, he didn't do it. At least he doesn't think he did. It had to have been the driver because Jack blacked out. Or did he? In court he's found innocent by way of insanity and is sent to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.
There he is treated -- for lack of a better word -- by Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), a physician of the unorthodox variety whose office is in the constant state of dim and the glass on his disk is permanently one-fourth filled with whiskey. His treatment for Jack involves strapping him in a straight jacket, pumping him full of mind-altering drugs and slamming him into a morgue drawer for a long period of time (the first trip is three hours and it only gets worse) to, oh I don't know...reflect on his mental state.
While locked inside the drawer Jack begins receiving flashbacks, but from the future -- 2007 to be precise -- and reunites with a much older, more matured young-adult version of Jackie. She is played by Keira Knightley who does her best to disguise the British accent by replacing it with a cold and menacing tone; perhaps the intention of the director.
She has a hard time believing the man in front of her who says he's Jack Starks is actually Jack Starks, because, as she tells him in that cold and menacing tone, "Jack Starks is dead!"
As it turns out, Jack dies shortly after New Year's Day 2003, just a week away from the present day, being spent by Jack inside a morgue drawer learning this from the future. He returns to the present as soon as he's pulled from the drawer and released back into the general population of other patients.
He befriends a few, and Dr. Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whom he relies on to make sure he is continually placed inside the morgue drawer, otherwise there would be no way for him to figure out how's he going to die and how to stop it. In order for him to get the good Dr. Lorenson to believe that a mental patience isn't really mental, he and Jackie do investigative work in the future to bring back and tell Dr. Lorenson, information he'd otherwise have no way of getting access to.
Both Brody and Knightley take their roles seriously. A risk lest the movie bombs, and likely due the plot and poorly generic movie trailer. Brody has less at stake considering he was forgiven for the M. Night Shyamalan blunder, The Village and has an Oscar to back him up.
Knightley has been impressive in almost everything she's done (and to think my least favorite film of hers was Pirates of the Caribbean) and is riveting here as she was in the British thriller The Hole, not so much like her fluffier roles: Bend it Like Beckham, Pirates, Love Actually" and King Arthur.
Her character in this film however, if I must critique, does dance along the border of plausibility; being able to quickly recall specific names, dates and events that happened 17 years ago - being too inexplicably beautiful to be a single waitress working restaurant tables on Christmas Eve. That she's so willing to help him learn about his past even before she's convinced of his true identity...and did I mention she's single?
As the story progresses the film's continuity balances between the present and future, and succeeds in not getting so wrapped up in what it's trying to accomplish that plot-holes outshine the effect as they did in The Butterfly Effect, whose fans will love “The Jacket” and be joined to a lesser degree by the general movie-going population.
The Jacket is the first film of 2005 to make me think considerably about the future, alternate parallel universes and how our actions in one timeline can influence another. Not only that, I was unexpectedly moved by the outcome. While too many similar movies drag on past its welcoming point, The Jacket cuts off just when you don't quite want it to. When you're not quite sure if things worked out or if our hero failed. You have to decide for yourself. Yes, this is one of those movies and it's about time we got one this year.
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