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Title: The Jacket (2005)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Adrien Brody | ... | Jack Starks | |
| Keira Knightley | ... | Jackie Price | |
| Kris Kristofferson | ... | Dr. Thomas Becker | |
| Jennifer Jason Leigh | ... | Dr. Beth Lorenson | |
| Kelly Lynch | ... | Jean Price | |
| Brad Renfro | ... | The Stranger | |
| Daniel Craig | ... | Rudy Mackenzie | |
| Steven Mackintosh | ... | Dr. Hopkins | |
| Brendan Coyle | ... | Damon | |
| Mackenzie Phillips | ... | Nurse Harding | |
| Laura Marano | ... | Young Jackie | |
| Jason Lewis | ... | Officer Harrison | |
| Richard Dillane | ... | Captain Medley | |
| Jonah Lotan | ... | Intern #1 | |
| Angel Coulby | ... | Intern #2 | |
The film centers on a wounded Gulf war veteran who returns to his native Vermont suffering from bouts of amnesia. He is hitching and gets picked up by a stranger, things go pear shaped when a cop pulls them over and is murdered by the stranger. The vet. is wrongly accused of killing the cop and lands up in an asylum. A quack doctor prescribes a course of experimental therapy, restraining him in a heavy duty straight jacket-like device, and locks him away in a body drawer of the basement morgue. During course of his treatment he gets flashbacks and visions of his future , where he can foresee he is to die in four days time. The catch is he doesn't know how. Thus commences the classic race against time. Written by Austin4577@aol.com
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First off, this film is not for everyone. It does, however, seem to delineate an emerging and exciting trend in contemporary film making whereby directors are becoming increasingly enamored with these sorts of dark, brooding, almost dreamscape-like and melodramatic thrillers which defy archetypal and conventional narrative formats. Think of the "The Machinist" and work your way backwards to "Vanilla Sky", or even as far back as 1990's "Jacob's Ladder" as one other reviewer accurately suggested.
To this end, "The Jacket" represents the apotheosis of this rising genre, and is both an artistic psychological thriller, as well as what you might call a metaphysical tragedy, and easily envelopes the viewer into its morose and sterile world replete with dreary snow scapes, perpetual grey skies and faces, muted and washed out colours, institutional isolation, and the angst of working class loners. The film's imagery and the pace of the story and script immediately command one's attention from the outset and the film is unrelenting in both its tension and gumption. Because of this, despite the story's meandering timeline and lack of feasible explanations for the protagonist's "visions", the viewer is still to an extent able to believe what they're seeing. Because the film takes itself so seriously, and actually pulls it off, the viewer then buying into the fantasy of the story becomes far more palatable than it does in other misguided attempts at this same sort of risky and artsy storytelling ie: "The Butterfly Effect".
This is an ambitious film which taps into both the romanticism and pain of our dreams and our memories, and how they both act upon us, and cause us to act upon them. It examines what is real versus perceived, the fragility of life, how each persons's life effects others, even passing strangers, and the sovereignty of the self and the mind. 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.
Despite the big names on the marquee, however, this, as previously mentioned, is not a cut and dry "popcorn flick" and will leave many people bewildered. It is for these people that the "Butterfly Effect" was made first, and now with them out of the way, the timing for a film of this caliber which deals with these issues properly is appropriate. "The Jacket" is a trippy and entertaining yet still very intelligent film which asks only that you check your preconceptions and logical rectitude at the door. By doing so, you'll find the imagination of this film is fact more real than you might have expected.