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The Jacket
Directed by: John Maybury
Starring: Adrien Brody
Genre:
Sci-Fi/Drama
Run Time: 103
min.
Release Date:
March 2005
On The Web:
Official
Site
Teaser:
Movie Trailer
Reviewed by
Byron Merritt |
Jack Starks is in the Gulf
War when he receives a serious head wound from a gunshot. Initially
presumed dead, a nurse suddenly realizes he's still alive when he
blinks. His body is saved, but his mind is still severely traumatized.
Rocked with distortions of time and events, Jack struggles to become a
normal member of Amercian society upon release from the military
hospital.
But things quickly go strangely awry for Jack. While hitchhiking across
the U.S. he runs into a mother and daughter sitting alongside the road
next to their broken down truck. The daughter, a sweet young girl, helps
Jack fix the truck while the girl's drugged-out mother pukes in the
bushes nearby. After the truck is started, the mother pushes past Jack,
inserts her daughter into the truck, and abruptly and rudely leaves.
Then Jack gets picked up by a young man in a station wagon who ends up
killing a cop while Jack is traveling with him, and since Jack can't
remember a lot of things (remember, he's got some brain damage from the
gunshot wound to his head), he's arrested and sent to an asylum for the
criminally insane run by actor Kris Kristofferson (FAST
FOOD NATION).
During all of this there are fragments of Jack's mind that seep onto the
screen in very surreal ways (punctuations of color, blast pieces of the
war, etc.), and Jack's not all that sure when he is. Is it 1992?
In a brutal method to try and "help" Jack, Kristofferson's character
drugs him and places him in a straight jacket then into a morgue box for
isolation. During these "sessions", Jack seems to travel into the
future. To 2007 to be exact. But why? Apparently this time holds some
significance and the audience is slowly let in on it as the film
progresses. In 2007, he meets up with the same young girl turned young
woman that he'd met alongside the road years before and helped get their
truck started. A race to save those that he loves in the past soon takes
place from what he learns in the future. But is it all real, or is it
just another fracture in his mind?
This film has been seriously mislabeled as a thriller. It is not a
thriller or even a horror-stylized film. If you had to categorize it,
I'd say it's a Sci-Fi Drama. Even the insipid tagline for the film,
"Terror has a new name," is horribly misleading.
In the vein of
MOMENTO and
THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, this film has a lot going for it, even above those
two other movies (which I also enjoyed by the way). But where THE JACKET
succeeds is in coherency, while Momento and The Butterfly
Effect kind of
left me wanting.
The acting was also stellar.
Keira Knightley (PIRATES
OF THE CARRIBEAN) plays the young woman who Jack meets in 2007
and begins to believe that he may very well be time-traveling. I never
thought Knightley could perform in such a starkly different role than
the upbeat films I've seen her in, but she does so very admirably here.
Adrien Brody (HOLLYWOODLAND) plays the lead role of Jack Starks and does so with
understated grace.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kris Kristofferson, and Brad Renfro (10TH
& WOLF) all
pull in strong supporting roles, too.
So if you're not a big thriller fan, don't worry about it. Pick up this
film and enjoy it.
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Image from The Jacket
DVD cost: $9.99
Purchase:
BestPrices.com
Film Review Stew
Favorite? No.
Stew Poo-Poo? No.
Newsworthy: b>Keira Knightley
credits the food poisoning she had during her audition for landing her
the part of a sickly alcoholic.
Movie Quote: "Don't
act like I don't know what's real."
Other Actors/Actresses
from The Jacket
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