Wednesday, March 09, 2005

The Jacket ***
Cast: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Daniel Craig, Kelly Lynch
Director: John Maybury
Running Length: 1:42
MPAA Classification: R

During the Gulf War, in 1991, Jack Starks (Brody) gets unexpectantly shot in the head by a child, and left for dead. Doctors soon see is alive and treat him. A year later, he is home, and physically healed. Mentally, he is not quite 100%. While wandering down a country road, he helps a little girl and her mom, and then hitchhikes a ride from another driver who gets him involved in a shooting. Once again he is injured, and soon finds himself in the Alpine Grove Psychiatric Hospital for the criminally insane.

There, Dr. Becker (Kristofferson) begins unorthidox experiments on him. Dr. Becker puts him in a straightjacket, drugs him, and throws him into a morgue drawer. "You can't break something that is already broken." In the drawer, he travels 15 years into the future and meets up with Jackie (Knightley), the girl he helped on the roadside. She begins to help him solve a mystery about his future and perhaps even her own.

Adrien Brody is good as the tormented Gulf War vet trying to figure out exactly what is happening to him. Keira Knightley also gives a good performance as the woman tormented by her past. "The Jacket" is a pleasantly bizarre and thought provoking movie. It providw no definite answers, and encourages the viewer to come to their own conclusions. That is a rarity in movies these days, and what director John Maybury has done is refreshing. This is not a perfect movie, but it is a very good one.

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