Movie Type: Psychological Thriller, Supernatural Thriller
Themes: Home From the War, Haunted By the Past, Mental Illness
Main Cast: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Daniel Craig
Release Year: 2005
Country: US/UK
Run Time: 102 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A troubled war veteran tries to unlock his memories of a terrible crime in this stylish thriller, the first American project for British filmmaker John Maybury. In 1991, Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) was an American soldier serving in the Persian Gulf when he was shot in the head; pronounced dead by a field surgeon, Starks somehow returned to life, though with no small number of psychological problems to show for his troubles. A year later, Starks is walking through the snowy Vermont wilderness when he discovers a woman whose truck has broken down, Jean (Kelly Lynch). Starks tries to help Jean and her young daughter, and later flags down a car for a ride into town; however, the car is being driven by a criminal on the run from the police (Brad Renfro), and not long after the car is cornered by police, Starks' memory goes blank. When he comes to, Jack is accused of killing a patrolman in the violent standoff that followed, and is told the woman, her daughter, and the criminal existed only in his imagination. Declared insane in his murder trial, Starks is sentenced to a mental institution run by Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), who seems to believe that the more brutal the treatment, the better. As Starks suffers frequent beatings and long spells in a frozen locker, his mind drifts from his harrowing past into the future, where he visits with Jackie (Keira Knightley), who once was the young girl Starks tried to help. The Jacket also features Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Lorenson, a compassionate doctor who tries to help Starks and his fellow patients. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Relentlessly stylish, The Jacket is nonetheless a fairly standard whodunit about mental hospital abuse, the Gulf War, and time travel. That's a joke, but it's true that nothing feels quite new in this otherwise solid production -- which seems to be built from original parts, or at least parts that haven't been lumped together before. There's certainly enough in John Maybury's film to keep a viewer interested, particularly the flashy edits and sudden close-ups that approximate the henpecked delusions of Gulf vet Jack Starks (Adrien Brody). But Massy Tadjedin's script doesn't provide a sublime payoff for its foreboding plot details. One crucial episode never gets resolved, which is fine in the real world, but not so fine in the time travel genre, where even minor details typically have a divine purpose. Although it doesn't quite get there, The Jacket is worth watching for the strong performances of Brody and Keira Knightley. Brody gets the shell-shocked quivering down perfectly, playing a man caught in a purgatory between alertness and fugue, sanity and breakdown. The "treatments" he undergoes -- at the hands of a casually malevolent Kris Kristofferson -- are an eerie criticism of institutions whose corruption goes unchecked, because the patients are as likely to be raving conspiracy theorists as credible victims. Knightley, meanwhile, shows she's as comfortable in dark territory as she has been in her previous sunny roles. Despite heavy hitters George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh lending their cachet as producers, The Jacket slipped out of theaters after collecting only six million dollars at the box office. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Philip McKeon - Co-producer, Marc Rocco - Co-producer, Marc Frydman - Co-producer, Kia Jam - Co-producer, Andreas Schmid - Co-producer, Donald C. McKeon - Co-producer, Philip A. McKeion - Co-producer, Doug Hall - Costume Designer, Karen Richards - First Assistant Director, John Maybury - Director, Emma E. Hickox - Editor, Jennifer Fox - Executive Producer, Peter E. Strauss - Executive Producer, Andreas Grosch - Executive Producer, Christopher Roberts - Executive Producer, Ben Cosgrove - Executive Producer, Mark Cuban - Executive Producer, Todd Wagner - Executive Producer, Alan Grosch - Executive Producer, Ori Marmur - Executive Producer, Brian Eno - Composer (Music Score), Andy Richards - Musical Direction/Supervision, Alan Macdonald - Production Designer, Peter Deming - Cinematographer, George Clooney - Producer, Peter Guber - Producer, Steven Soderbergh - Producer, Colin Nicolson - Sound/Sound Designer, Marc Rocco - Screen Story, Tom Bleecker - Screen Story, Massy Tadjedin - Screenwriter, Centropolis Entertainment - Digital Effects, Paul Davies - Supervising Sound Editor, Peter Mcaleese - Co-Executive Producer
After miraculously recovering from a bullet wound to the head, Gulf War veteran Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) returns to Vermont in 1992, suffering from amnesia. Accused of murdering a police officer, he is found not guilty by reason of insanity, and is incarcerated in a mental institution. Starks becomes subject to the experiments of Dr. Thomas Becker, a psychiatrist. Starks is injected with an experimental drug and put into a straitjacket; he is then locked in a morgue drawer. While in this condition, Jack's mind sends him into the future of late December 2007, where he discovers, amongst other things, that he is destined to die in four days from his first incarceration in the drawer in 1992. While in the future, Starks meets Jackie Price (Keira Knightley), whom he helped in 1992 returning from Vermont. At first, Jackie does not believe Jack's story, but on subsequent trips to the drawer (and the future) she helps him learn how he is to die, in the process becoming attached to him. Jackie learns that Jack dies from head trauma, but visiting the mental institution no one there is able or willing to explain how it happened. With his time running out, Jack writes a letter explaining Jackie's bleak future and gives it to Jackie's mother (who died by burns when she fell unconscious with a cigarette.) On the return trip to the hospital, Jack slips on the ice and hits his head; bleeding profusely, he convinces the hospital workers to put him in the jacket one last time. Jack returns to 2007, where Jackie's mother is still alive and she has a better life. The screen fades to white, and Jackie says "How much time do we have?" and the credits start to roll.
The Jacket shares its title, and the idea of a person experiencing extra-corporeal time-travel while in an intolerably tight straitjacket, with a 1915 novel by Jack London. The novel was published in the United Kingdom as The Jacket and in the United States of America as The Star Rover. Director Maybury has said that the film is "loosely based on a true story that became a Jack London story."[1]. (The true story is that of Ed Morrell, who told London about San Quentin prison's inhumane use of tight straitjackets).
Release and reception
The Jacket opened on March 4, 2005, and grossed $2,723,682 on opening weekend, with a peak release of 1,331 theaters in the United States. The film went on to gross $6,303,762 domestically, for a total of $14,822,463 worldwide.[2]
The Jacket garnered mixed reviews on release; the film has a 44% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes,[3] and a 44% average critic rating on the aggregate reviews site Metacritic.[4]
Despite its negative critical reviews, user scores were more positive, with imdb.com scoring it a 7.0 out of 10 based on 29,496 votes as of 13 April 2009.
