A funny -- okay, not really funny but interesting -- thing happened to me while I was penning this review for the new psychological thriller "The Jacket." As I was writing the plot synopsis, I could have sworn that I had just written an entire paragraph, only to have it suddenly disappear.
The undo feature in my word processor brought back other edits, changes and deletions that I made to the document, but that paragraph never returned. I had no problem writing it again -- as if from memory since I had just penned it -- but it brought up some interesting questions that, oddly enough, parallel some of those brought up by the film.
Did I actually write that passage, or had my mind played tricks on me after working too many hours and seeing too many films? Perhaps I somehow managed to travel into the future -- in body or just spirit -- and read my already finished review and that's where I remember having read that paragraph. Appropriately but ironically enough, the mind begins to wander and ponder those questions and potential answers that one may not really want to discover.
That's part of the fun of this heady, if flawed flick that starts out decently, becomes muddled and bogged down somewhere in the middle, and then wraps things up with a terrific ending that gives the film more depth, especially in hindsight. You can't beat when a film starts by having its main character state that the first time he died, he was just 27-years-old. This coincides with footage from the first Gulf War where Adrien Brody's Jack Starks is shot in the head by a young kid and for all intent purposes is considered dead.
A nurse notes, however, that he, in fact, is alive, but we're lead to wonder -- especially considering the character's opening line -- whether he is or if this is going to be some sort of story along the lines of "Jacob's Ladder." Well, it is and yet it isn't.
Director John Maybury ("Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon," ) -- who works from a screenplay by Massy Tadjedin ("Leo") -- quickly zips us along from the Middle East to Vermont where our hero has a chance but important encounter with a young girl who asks for his military dog tags, and then one with a stranger who may or may not have killed a cop in Jack's company.
The next thing we know, Jack is on trial for the murder, is found not guilty due to insanity, and is then institutionalized in a mental hospital that doesn't appear to be the nicest place to be stuck. Jack, of course, doesn't remember anything about the murder, but he's about to get some catalytic help in the form of experimental isolation therapy created by Mr. "Convoy" himself, Kris Kristofferson (the "Blade" movies). Rather than be put into the sort of chamber viewers might remember from "Altered States," Kristofferson's nebulous doctor character has his patients strapped into a straight jacket (hence the film's title), drugged with some sort of unknown concoction, and then slid into an empty morgue slot.
The related death symbolism is creepy if obvious (and makes us continue to wonder whether the main character is alive, dead or just imagining this from some other state), but it's here where the film starts to get interesting. Although Maybury unfortunately goes the route of subjecting us (and Brody's character) to all sorts of flash imagery -- in initial lieu of anything more substantial or spooky -- the therapy has the effect of transporting Jack to another place and time.
Yes, when boiled down to the basics, this is a time travel sort of story. Yet, the fun and intriguing part of it is that such travel is apparently occurring just in the patient's head. Mentally returning to the scene of the crime is obviously the therapeutic goal (along with tempering the assumed violent proclivities of the perp). Our hero, however, not only travels into the past and the cop's murder, but also to the not terribly distant future where he meets a character from his past who is now grown up and has gotten on (or not) with their life.
When he then learns that he's dead in the future (having died in the past, just days after being put into the morgue slot), he then wants to return there so that he can travel to the future again and find out what really happened in the past.
It's not as convoluted as is sounds, and for a while as it unfolds, the story is only moderately interesting and comes off as being weird and unconventional just to be that. But something happens along the way, like the proverbial snowball rolling down hill, where the film begins to pick up speed and intrigue before crashing headfirst into the viewer and his or her expectations of what the film is about and where it's headed.
It's rare for a film to start off okay, lose momentum midway through and then regain it at the end, but Maybury manages -- intentional or not -- to pull that off. I'm sure there will be viewers who won't get the film and its ending, or won't care after having lost their interest in that dead middle. For yours truly, I thought the film was a lost cause, but am happy to report that -- at least for me -- it recovers quite nicely and delivers a story that -- when looked at collectively -- is intriguing and thought-provoking.
As the troubled, dead and/or imagined protagonist, Brody ("The Village," "The Pianist") is decent if occasionally (and one assumes purposefully) operating in a cloudy mental state. His character isn't exactly the typical proactive type who gets the audience worrying about him and rooting for his success as he races against time. Even so, I found that his confused and shell-shocked demeanor was appropriate for the character as written.
Then there's Keira Knightley ("King Arthur," "Love Actually") playing the woman in the future who helps him uncover the truth. She's also playing a damaged soul (for reasons eventually revealed in the film's second half), but I just didn't buy her or her performance that feels too over the top in such troubled and edgy regards.
Beyond Kristofferson ("Silver City," the "Blade" movies), supporting roles are played by the likes of Jennifer Jason Leigh ("Road to Perdition," "The Anniversary Party") as a concerned doctor at the mental hospital, Daniel Craig ("Sylvia," "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider") as another patient there, and Kelly Lynch ("Joe Somebody," "Charlie's Angles") as a troubled mother. All are fine in their roles, even if the script doesn't flesh out their characters enough.
I wish I could say I loved this film from start to finish, but there are various flaws in its structure and Maybury's visual storytelling. Nevertheless and despite losing momentum and fumbling the ball midway through, the film manages to recover and turn into a decent psychological thriller that should provide for some interesting post-viewing analysis and debate over its concept. Then again, perhaps I've only imagined seeing the film or writing this review while stuck in some isolation chamber somewhere. Or maybe you're in the same boat thinking really reading it right now.
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