The Jacket

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with Adrien Brody as an active soldier in the Gulf War in 1991. His voiceover tells us he was 27 the first time he died. While on duty, a young boy ambushes him and he is shot in the head.We move forward a year and he is clearly a loner. We see him hitch-hiking along a snowy road. He encounters a broken-down pick up truck with a young mother (Kelly Lynch), clearly under of the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, and a young girl, about eight or ten years old.The mother is too strung out to know what's going on, stumbling around in the snow near the truck intermittently vomiting.The girl meanwhile, is happy to talk to Brody, who offers to try to fix the truck. The girl sees his army dog tags attached to his bag and asks what they are. He says they're dog tags with his name on them, so he won't get lost. The girl asks can she have them and he gives them to her.After tinkering around with the engine, he asks the girl to try the ignition and the truck starts. At this point, the mother comes to, and, in her stoned reverie, becomes enraged, deciding that Brody is some kind of pervert, despite the girls protestations that he fixed the truck. She bundles the girl into the car and they drive off.Brody continues to walk, and is later picked up by a man in a car some miles from the Canadian border.After a few minutes of driving, the car is pulled over by a policeman. We don't see what happens at this point in the narrative, but next thing we know, Brody is on trial for the murder of the cop, and cannot remember anything from the day in question apart from the mother and the young girl, who the authorities have been unable to trace.Brody is found guilty but insane and sent to an asylum run by Kris Kristofferson.Jennifer Jason Leigh also works in the asylum. We later see that she is attempting to offer occupational therapy for the disabled son of a friend, but her success is minimal. This takes place in her home, and is not information Brody is privy to.One night, Brody is pumped full of drugs by the staff, placed in a straight jacket and put in a mortuary drawer. Here, he experiences several, rapid-cut flash backs to his past, including the war and the incident with the policeman, but not enough to assist piecing together what happened.The next time they try to put him in the drawer, he feigns acquiescence to lull the staff into a false sense of his co-operation, but then assaults Kristofferson, striking him in the face and injuring his cheek.In his next session, he finds himself transported to outside a diner late on Christmas Eve. Keira Knightley leaves work in the diner, pulls up and offers him a lift, explaining that he won't get a cab on Christmas Eve standing there.She takes him home and it is apparent that she drinks heavily and lives an isolated life. While she takes a bath, Brody rummages around in the fridge and ends up making them some toasted sandwiches.Knightley tells Brody that her mother died some years before, having passed out with a cigarette in her hand and subsequently burned to death.Looking around her place, Brody discovers his dog tags and asks her how she got them. Knightley becomes concerned when Brody tries to explain that they are his. Up to this point, we have no idea what year we are in, but a cursory glance at some bank statements reveals that Brody is now in 2007.Unable to explain to himself how this has happened, but completely convinced that he has somehow shot forward in time and met the grown-up girl, Brody tries to explain to Knightley who he is.Attempting to convince her by giving details about the day he met her and her mother with the pick-up truck (information which, as he says, there's no way he could know by just looking at the dog tags), an incredulous Knightley is adamant that he can't be who he claims to be, as he died on January 1st, 1993 as a result of a head wound, although she has no further information on this.Already emotionally unstable, Knightley becomes hysterical and demands he leave.Brody does so, and wakes up, back in the drawer in 1992.Brody now needs to get into the drawer on a nightly basis, in order to piece together what's going to happen to him on January 1st, six days away.Returning to 2007, Knightley now believes him, and agrees to help him. Brody needs to find out what happened to him, so (in order to explain the uncanny similarity to his own self from fifteen years earlier) he poses as his own nephew, and visits Jennifer Jason Leigh with Knightley.During this visit, he learns of her use of electro-shock therapy on the boy she looked after, but they learn nothing of the circumstances in which he died.While at the hospital, Brody encounters a patient who had been an orderly there when he was undergoing the jacket/mortuary drawer treatment, and who is now suffering from dementia.Knightley and Brody have sex, but Knightley wakes up alone the next morning, Brody having been sucked back to 1992 by his removal from the drawer.During one of his episodes in the drawer, we see what happened the day the policeman was killed. Pulled over by the cop, the driver of the car shoots him. Brody gets out of the car, incredulous. As the cop slumps back in the snow, he fires a shot which strikes Brody by accident. The driver continues to fire at the cop, killing him. He then wipes his gun clean and throws it into the snow near the now unconscious Brody, before driving away. Brody is incriminated and sent to the asylum.On his next visit to the future, Brody confronts Kristofferson, now an old man, convinced that he knows what became of him on January 1st, 1993, but Kristofferson cannot help.Brody asks Knightley what her address was in 1992, i.e. when he met her as a child on the roadside, and she tells him. Driving away, Brody disappears from the back seat of Knightley's car and returns to 1992.Back in 1992, Brody manages to convince Jennifer Jason Leigh that he has seen the future by telling her that she told him she used electro-therapy on the young boy. She doesn't believe him, as she says that such practices would not be used on so young a patient, but he says that she will eventually come to realise that this is the only way to help the boy. Brody explains that the boy is effectively in a constant fit, and that Leigh just hasn't realised this yet.Due to her lack of success with the boy up to this point, she takes a chance on Brody's assertion as to the electro-therapy. She applies a very low-frequency, short burst to the boy, which has instant success.Now that she believes Brody, she agrees to his request to deliver a letter to Kelly Lynch. Leigh smuggles him out of the asylum to drive him out to Keira Knightley's childhood home (i.e. where she lived in 1992/1993).Arriving at the house, the girl recognises him from the day he fixed the truck. He asks to speak to her mother.Having already learned that Kelly Lynch will pass out one day with a cigarette in her hand, and burn to death from the resulting fire, Brody gives her a letter warning her of this.Returning to the asylum with Jennifer Jason Leigh that evening, Brody slips on ice and hits his head, causing his fatal head wound. Asylum staff place him into the drawer before he dies, allowing him to return to 2007.As he is standing outside the diner, Knightley pulls up in a VW Beetle and offers him a lift (we assume that she recognises him, although in the altered future he would not have explained to her how he is to be there, completely unaged 14 years from the last time they met (all the previous experiences never happened for Knightley after Brody handed her mother the letter)). As they are driving away, Knightley's mother calls her on the phone. In this altered future, having (we assume) been convinced by Brody to believe the contents of the letter, Lynch (presumably) has cleaned up her act, so that in the improved 2007, she is still alive and it is apparent that she has a strong relationship with her (no longer dysfunctional) daughter.Knightley asks Brody "how long do we have?", and they drive off together to the strains of "We Have All The Time In The World".

Tags: romantic, alternate history, murder

Review:
"The Jacket" has gotten some bad press because the plot has a lot of holes in it, but if you suspend belief and just enjoy the movie, it is a lot of fun.Any film that involves time travel requires that you suspend belief, and "The Jacket" is no different.
It's not quite such a headbanging puzzle as Mulholland Drive, and it doesn't have the cutesiness of Donnie Darko, but it is in the realm of dark, weird and ultimately rather moving experimental film.Brody is Mr quite nice guy Jack Starks, apparently shot dead at point blank range in the Gulf War - but hang on a minute, his eyelids blink before they pronounce him dead and he recovers - with amnesia but otherwise OK - then he gets committed to an asylum for the criminally insane fro a murder he didn't do, and we're talking 1990s when some pretty strange experimental psychotherapy went on behind closed doors.
The film features outstanding performances from just about everyone on screen, particularly Brody as the hapless and tortured Jack Starks, and Kristofferson as the morally ambiguous and equally tortured Dr. Becker.
Awesome movie with interesting plot and outstanding actors.Reading the plot description one could make the mistake and expect some rather low quality B "action" flick.Nothing could be farther from the truth.Out comes an outstanding movie which will capture you from the beginning to the end, guaranteed.Its not your typical action-flick or cheaply made horror movie by any means.Adrien Brody again proves he is probably one of the best actors we have currently, in my opinion he is just phenomenal.
Kira's performance was "ok", not much too say here (sexy as always of course) and Daniel Craig and Kris Kristofferson did a great job also.I watched the movie and it immediately became one of my favorites.Highly recommended!
She overacted her part to the point of absurdity, and spent half the movie trying to awkwardly seduce the cameraman with her ugly overbite, doing things like staring hatefully at the camera with her hair in her face and sucking on the lip of a glass trying to be "drunk" but succeeding only in seeming mildly retarded with her mouth hanging open and her eyes looking dull and glazed throughout the film.
Her acting was so dismal and annoying (though, to her credit, she did do a good job with the American accent) it completely destroys her ability in my opinion.I wont go into the plot here, as it is confusing and not interesting and not the least furthered by the acting "talent" in the film, which actually has a pretty promising cast.
Brody plays Jack Starks, a name said so often during the film that I  didn't have to look it up again days later when preparing this review.
The Jacket jumps around in time so frequently that it takes you about  half way through the film to understand what exactly is going on; and  even then, I wasn't exactly sure how it all pieced together.
Whether you like The Jacket or not will depend on whether you are  someone who can sit back and enjoy a film or whether you think you are  smart enough and try to jump ahead to try and figure things out before  the characters do.
For those of you who just can't see though the major holes in the story will not enjoy this movie, but leave frustrated.The film does have some things that make it worth watching if you're in the right mood.
The best acting is with the supporting characters, like Daniel Craig and Jennifer Jason Leigh.Generally, the movie seems to try and please everyone.
In 2007 Jackie, now in her twenties, tells Starks that he died on 1st January 1993, only a few days after he entered the mental hospital in December 1992, so cannot be who he says he is.The film is reminiscent of two great time-travel romances from the seventies and eighties, "Quest for Love" and "Somewhere in Time".
Like "Quest for Love" it also plays with the idea of alternate realities and of altering time; Starks makes a number of trips into the future, into differing versions of 2007.
Starks has to resolve the paradox of how he can be alive in a future in which he is already "dead" and to use his knowledge of the future to try to prevent not only his own death in 1993 but also that of Jackie's mother Jean who we learn died in a fire some time during the period between 1993 and 2007.The best thing about the film is the performance of Adrien Brody as Starks.
Brody does not have classic "film-star looks", but in both "The Pianist" and "The Jacket" he is able to turn his looks to his advantage, using his long, gaunt face to suggest a haunted man suffering both physically and mentally.
Kris Kristofferson is also good as the psychiatrist Dr Becker, a man who in his quest for scientific knowledge has lost sight of his humanity, although I was rather disappointed by Keira Knightley as Jackie; this is not one of her better films.I would not rate "The Jacket" as highly as either "Quest for Love" or "Somewhere in Time"; the theme is not handled as clearly and the plot tends to become excessively complex and ambiguous in the second half of the theme.
About an hour into the film, I just thought "so what - throw him in the jacket, shut the drawer, leave him there and run the credits so I can go home."The film also makes the huge mistake of relying on what we've seen before - the mental patient who won't cooperate with the asylum, the alcoholic loser played by Keira Knightley who turns her life around because of "love" and suddenly can find a computer and the internet to help "save her man", the misunderstood doctor who's means justifies the end, the side-kick mental patient who is whacky but has a good heart even though he tried to kill his wife, blah, blah, blah.Also, the film takes too many liberties with driving the story forward by forcing characters to act against their own frame of reasoning.
In the Q and A after the movie Marbury answers were bloated with his own self importance and his arrogance was palpable.Brody on the other hand gave intelligent,well thought out and truly thoughtful articulate answers to his Q and questions and he demonstarted why he is truly is a world class actor and human.I sensed that he knew that Marbury was way over the top and needed to step infor the Q and A and cool the hostility that Marbury was projecting.I also sensed a strong dislike for the director from all of the cast members including Keira Knightley and maybe this is why the movie did not connect in a convincing and personal way.Too bad the direction of this movie compromised Brody's world class ability to emote to the full extension of his psychological abilities.
The elements on which relies the scenario have all been used over and over again — and often better — in other productions: for example, some developments are a bit far-fetched, like the not so credible love story.It's a shame because the direction is good, as the rhythm, the intriguing atmosphere is coherent with the genre, but it's Adrien Brody's excellent performance, by the way an incredibly underrated actor, who illuminates the movie, as opposed to his partner Keira Knightley, always very linear..
His doctor uses unconventional means to cure his madness, injecting him with experimental drugs and placing him in the morgue's body drawer, which causes him to have visions of his own death, giving him four days to find out what is real if he wants to save his own life.The plot sounds intriguing but the execution wasn't very good.
That doesn't mean that The Jacket is a bad film, it's just an average one and its also a missed opportunity.Adrien Brody, unsurprisingly, gives a pretty good performance.
The movie does a nice job of capturing the hell that would be the combination of a straight jacket and morgue drawer; however, never quite makes the connection between the Brody's current situation and his future world.
But all ends up being a big waste of time when you realize that the movie doesn't make any sense and that the film makers didn't have a clue about how to make the plot "complete the circle".
The Jacket is a far greater movie than I anticipated, the storyline is fresh and works beautifully.Adrien Brody and Keira Knightley light up the screen, their acting as good as expected of them, they always deliver.The film is about a man who suffers head trauma due to a wound during the Gulf War. He is later accused of murder and sentenced to a mental hospital following an incident with a driver and a police officer.
Adrien Brody worked great and he actually did look terrified in some of the jacket scenes.
Adrien's acting was Oscar-worthy and I thought Keira's accent was perfect and her performance spot-on.This film has accessible characters knit with deep themes that are particularly resonant in this time of war.
Memento keeps attention to details at premium and jarring quick cuts at minimum to result in an intriguing treatise on memory's imperfection and our bondage to time.The Jacket needs its own straight jacket to keep it focused for the attention span of an audience that has to wait far too long to get directions to where Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) is going, into the past or the future or both and why.
It goes back and forth between Adrien Brody, one of the least inspiring actors of all time, sobbing and whispering sweet nothings to himself and blaring loud cut scenes to what he experiences while in "The Jacket." Think Requiem for a Dream drug use montage...
In spite of the plagiarized story, I liked this movie, mostly because of the excellent actor Adrien Brody and the gorgeous Keira Knightley, who has also a great performance and chemistry with the lead actor.
"This movie is very open to interpretation, and that's why I think people will love it." - Director's comment from DVD extras Right.For me, "The Jacket" is a very unsuccessful rendition of "Jacob's Ladder", with a big difference that the latter movie is brilliant and the former kinda sucky.If you haven't watched "Ladder" please stop reading this comment and go see it.
But to distance itself from "Ladder", "Jacket" doesn't make a lot of sense and is actually proud of that.While Jacob from "Ladder" saw demons and had disturbing hallucinations, Jack (Brody) time travels.
It certainly did to me, and it suggested that the plot could be complex, involved and very consuming...yet it kind of failed to deliver for me.Adrien Brody was quite good in the film, and his performance was at times very strong emotionally.
As the character tried to find the answers he was sidetracked by meaningless scenes, or his questioning just stopped when he could have and would have pressed harder to find out what someone know about his death rather than saying thank you and leaving.Some of these sidetracked story lines were good and made some sense, and one even goes on to be the ultimate message of the movie, yet he never really does seem concerned with saving himself when someone really in that situation would be.
First he played Jack the slippery con artist in LOVE THE HARD WAY, now he plays amnesiac Gulf War veteran/accused murderer/asylum inmate/time traveler Jack Starks in THE JACKET, and Brody just wrapped Peter Jackson's (another Jack, sorta :-) KING KONG remake, due for Christmas season release, in which he plays playwright-turned-unlikely-hero Jack Driscoll.
It's a shame, because while THE JACKET is flawed, even derivative -- it could have been titled TWELVE MONKEYS CLIMB JACOB'S LADDER SOMEWHERE IN TIME AND EXPERIENCE THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT -- it's nevertheless a compelling, emotionally-charged viewing experience, showcasing Brody in his best intelligent, angst-ridden, Young Pacino/DeNiro mode.
While there, he is put in a jacket and given a drug that seemingly sends him fifteen years into the future.Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley (at her hottest), Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Daniel Craig (who looks more like Tommy Lee Jones than James Bond)...
Should that be the case, our whole notion of existence and reality (as well as cause and effect in this case) must change - that is one of the basic ideas in the film.So, if you just watch the movie very carefully, you will see a very interesting, mind-challenging, well-produced story.
The Jacket is a film that on the surface is a great mystery thriller, but once you start looking into it more deeply you can see that it's a lot more complex and intelligent than it makes itself out to be.
It is a truly brilliant, mindbending film with so much layers in it's main character and it's overall narrative.Adrien Brody delivers a shatteringly real performance as Jack Starks that disturbed me to my core.
Who knows?"The Jacket" from 2005 is a very good film, however, which also stars Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, and Jennifer Jason-Leigh.
During the treatments, he remembers things from his past...and also is able to go into the future, where he learns something disturbing.Really good film, part thriller/part drama, based on a 1913 book by Jack London which actually had to do with the prison system.
This dark, gritty film from 2005, captures the essence of despair of a world Brody's character had already left.We first meet our star, Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) in a military hospital during the Gulf War. The soldier was shot and believed to have died, when the stunned doctors realize he is alive and needs further medical attention right away.
The Jacket had me hopeful, but in the end left me just wanting a better story out of it.Fans of Adrien Brody's will surely enjoy the film and its message which I thought to be escape.
however if you don't analyse it too much it is an enjoyable movie, Adrian Broady is good if a little over the top, however it is in the supporting cast that the casting shines, the likes of Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kris Kristofferson are as always fantastic to watch and utterly believable, the most surprising thing of all though is Keira Knightly who although not fantastic gives a solid performance as the love interest/alcoholic mess up, she is captivating in her first intensely dramatic role and shows bright promise for the future.
Adrien Brody is absolutely fantastic for this role as Jack Starks; who, throughout the movie, discovers the truth about his past, and possibly others' future.
I had this on DVD fro some time and only watched it when i had nothing Else to watch but now i wished i watched it a lot sooner it is one of The best films i have ever saw and it ain't no remake or repeat like The same old boring films being made today this is a brilliant movie And everyone will enjoy it is and will always be a classic.the quickest way I can tell you about this film is that a guy gets put in a mental hospital and through his treatment he is able to visit the future and change certain things to a girl he meets before he was committed to witch he falls in love with the film is a thriller come sad come romance come everything you need for a really good film.
The Jacket has more than one little plot whole to sew up and a few loose buttons here and there but, at the same time, it is a fascinating, thrilling and spectacular story about the human mind and what it can sustain.Adrien Brody plays Jack Starks, a wounded solider who has amnesia.
The last time I did that was for "The Crow" with Brandon Lee.And I'm watching 3 movies a week the last 5 years.Adrien Brody is performing very good (outstanding) The movie is even very interesting in the beginning.
Than don't watch this movie.But if you want a good story about time and changing the future.
His existence in the mental institution is really bleak, but he finds that when he gets put in a straight-jacket and stuffed into a morgue-like drawer, he gets transported into the future where he's able to spend time with a beautiful young woman named Jackie (Keira Knightley).
The plot is simple and even random in some regards, but it all works and the movie plays like a work of art.The enjoyment that I got from the Jacket is definitely different from the way that I enjoy most films.
Regarding the performances, Adrien Brody does a fine job, in my opinion, he doesn't disappoint at all, however, Keira Knightley, I don't know why, I just don't like her acting style, this is the first time I see her doing an American accent and she does well here, but I sadly never can relate with her performance.
The question is, is The Jacket worth the interest of the film fan after a bit of time travelling weirdness?Well it has some problems, main one being that in spite of it gnawing away at the grey matter, the plot is simple and telegraphs the finale some way before it arrives: sadly tying things up too neatly after blurring our perceptions of Jack Stark's current state of mind.
The jacket is a very interesting and original film that kept me fun all the time,but it is not great thing.In the beginning it is a bit hard to understand the story,but at the ending you understand everything.The movie seemed very good at the beginning but after that,the movie is good but not so much as I thought.Adrien Brody makes a very good performance and the great Jennifer Jason Leigh has a very good performance.The only performance that did not convinced me at all was Keira Knightley's.The jacket is original,fun and interesting,but,like I said before,it is not great thing.Rating:7.