The Jacket
by John Maybury
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DVD details
Actor: Adrien Brody, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Keira Knightley, Kelly Lynch, Kris KristoffersonDirector: John Maybury
Brand: BRODY,ADRIEN
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-06-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Model: 33685
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody stars as a Gulf War veteran wrongly accused of murder, and subsequently committed to a mental institution. A controversial treatment regimen sends him on a mind-bending journey into the future, where he can foresee his death - and must try to stop it. Also stars Keira Knightley ("Pirates of the Caribbean 1 & 2," "Bend it Like Beckham"), Daniel Craig ("Road to
DVD Reviews of The Jacket
DVD Review: A Bridge Too Far...
Summary: 3 Stars
I have struggled a great deal with how to rate The Jacket. It is a film that comes just close enough to high-quality to make you wonder why it didn't come a lot closer. It reminds me of the little engine that tries so hard but ultimately, in this case, fails to breach the crest of that final hilltop. It is definitely full of - albeit sporadic - talent and intrigue. But even under moderate scrutiny, the seemingly minor structural flaws begin to quickly unravel, and leave it just a bit too barren to bear.
Adrien Brody is essentially an easy and brilliant casting move for nearly any role. And in The Jacket he certainly brings his pale, willowy pathos and deceptively seductive quirk to the role of Jack Starks. He owns the part as well as, I suppose, the part allows him to. His counter-part, played by Kiera Knightley, however seems an almost embarrassing mistake, cast as a fairly destitute, slightly alcoholic "white-trash" heroine. Her faltering and laughably husky American accent, coupled with a very thin veil of emotional broad-strokes leaves simply too much for want. I can almost imagine her watching a few episodes of Jerry Springer for inspiration... Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh, on the other hand, both quietly steal half the scenes, and are both commendable character actors that, unlike Knightley, at least don't over-act their roles.
The real issue that I had with the film, though, lies not in the acting, but in the story itself. As a die-hard fan of films like Memento, I am never one to shy away from (and conversely will often gravitate towards) plots with wildly non-linear structure. So, as I call The Jacket a 'scattered effort', I am not referring to the time-line leap-frogging that occurs. It felt as though the writer was, to begin with, very unsure of what story he/she really wanted to tell - what was the point? To their credit, the film is actually packed with very real and accessible emotions, and with Brody spearheading the project, I certainly found myself swept-up in the sentimental elements at times. But where the film bulges with empathy, it feels deflated and falls drastically short on technical dexterity. I can't fathom that the writer had much, if any, background or researched knowledge of mental illness, psychiatric institutions/medication, and most of all theoretical time-travel philosophies. The scenes in the hospital are so 2-dimmensional and cliché, that - if not for a rather brilliant performance by Daniel Craig (who may very well prove himself to be among the next wave of Phillip Seymore Hoffman-esque character actors) - the scenes could almost just as well have been cut in half; nobody needs to see any more gruff, abusive male nurses who get their's in the end. The idea of the particular brand of therapy given to Brody's character - pumping him full of anti-convulsive/psychotic sedatives like Attivan, binding him up in one of the most draconian and antiquated strait jackets I've ever seen, and throwing him in a morgue drawer, as a method for solving schizophrenia and amnesia is...well, just a little goofy - at least to be taking place in the 90's. Had the story been set during the time when this fictional treatment was (within the movie) invented, the 70's, it could be marginally believable.
The time travel notion seems more a gimmick bandwagon that a desperate writer hopped on, intending to instill an otherwise luke-warm story with edge. Sure, any plot dealing in time travel is based on fantasy - but it would be nice to think that the writer had at least cracked a single book on quantum mechanics before attempting this sci-fi task. Even in my most whimsical and innocent state, I just cannot entertain the possibility that taking Attivan, wearing a strait jacket, and going to sleep in a morgue is going to propel someone 14 years into the future. It reminds me of that older Christopher Reeve movie, "Somewhere in Time" where he performs the lofty deed simply through self-hypnosis.
So Jack Starks dies, at first during the Gulf War, but somehow then revives after several minutes and is shipped back home with a Swiss-cheese memory. As he meanders down a road one day, he helps a mother and daughter whose car is broken down. Then, later, he gets a ride from a not-so ethical Brad Renfroe, who is soon pulled over for speeding, kills the cop, and leaves Jack unconscious on the side of the road, to take the wrap. Since Jack has no real memory, he can't defend himself in court, so he is sentenced to a mental institution. Then there's the typical psych-ward fare, and when Jack finally received his morgue treatment, he finds himself in the future, and meets that little girl (Knightley) all grown up. Weirdness ensues, he bounces back and forth a few times between his life in the ward and the future with Knightley, all while trying to solve the mystery of his own imminent death. He saves himself in the end, by entering the drawer once more after slipping on ice cracking his head open on the ground (that's the mystery solved - no conspiracy, just bad footing), and is catapulted into a future that he has made brighter for himself and Kiera Knightley's character. And of course, they managed to squeeze in a love-affair during his little temporal jaunts, which he ultimately returns to in the end, somehow escaping the prior dynamic of having to return to his original time after only a few hours. This time, because he has died in the "past", I suppose he's free to live in the future. How nice.
But all of that aside, still, I could have really liked this movie if not for the rather short attention span the writer exhibited in failing to develop some kind of focused trajectory for the characters. One minute their awash in tear-filled emotion, the next it seems like ADD has kicked in on the writers' part, and we're watching fluff thrown in for time filler, with scenes that just don't move the story forward. I understand that they are attempts to show the individual characters' depth, but mostly it fails.
The Jacket has been making the rounds on HBO this month, so I've given it three full tries, just to make sure there wasn't some scene or element I had missed that would somehow galvanize this sloppy tale. But it simply tries to be a little cleverer than it is. It's not a `bad' movie - it's just too full of good actors, and good ideas, to be so ineffectual and disjointed. But I say give it a fair shot and see what you think.
Description of The Jacket
A Gulf War veteran is wrongly accused of murder and placed in a mental institution where a controversial treatment enables him to see future events.Genre: Horror
Rating: R
Release Date: 14-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD
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