Adrien Brody and Kiera Knightley in The Jacket

The Jacket plays with the normally linear conventions of movie making to deliver a thought provoking and sometimes scary mind twister. It’s the early 1990’s and Adrien Brody plays Gulf War soldier Jack Starks who is shot in the head, almost dying we then cut to six months later as Jack is making his way home he stops to offer a woman and her daughter help with their broken down car, this is to prove a pivotal moment when we

flash forward (or maybe back you’re never quite sure for the first half hour) to Jack trapped in a psychiatric institution, boss of the asylum Kris Kristofferson has a brutal new treatment practice which involves his patients being bound in a strait jacket and then placed inside a tight confined space (actually to be a morgue type arrangement), this is highly traumatic of course but once inside this “morgue” Jack finds himself being thrust into the year 2007 where he learns that he actually died in 1993. Still in the future he is befriended by Keira Knightley’s Jackie a young woman who seems to have strong ties to his past and together they try to piece together the missing fragments of his life.

The Jacket is a highly surreal and involving movie, sometimes hard to watch, especially the straight jacket sequences but the opening 20 minutes hooks you and keeps you guessing right to the twist in the tale ending. Brody is excellent as the man out of time Jack but Keira Knightley and her strange deep voiced American accent seems slightly out of place as does the incongruous sex scene two thirds of the way into the movie. The Jacket will certainly provoke food for thought and will linger long in the memory proving itself more than worth a look.

ANY SPECIAL FEATURES THEN?

Extras include a project history and deleted scenes as well as a featurette on the special effects. The theatrical trailer is also included.

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