Jack Starks, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War, is charged with the murder of a policeman. Although Starks is innocent, the fact that he is suffering from amnesia means that he is unable to prove his innocence, and he is found "not guilty by reason of insanity", and placed in a mental institution where he is subjected to cruel experiments. He is injected with an experimental drug, bound in a straitjacket (from which the film takes its name) and placed in a morgue drawer. In this condition, however, he finds that he is able to travel into the future; he awakens to find himself in 2007. (Two years after the film was made in 2005).
The other main character in the film is a young woman named Jackie, whom Starks briefly met as a young girl shortly before the murder of the policeman. In 2007 Jackie, now in her twenties, tells Starks that he died on 1st January 1993, only a few days after he entered the mental hospital in December 1992, so cannot be who he says he is.
The film is reminiscent of two great time-travel romances from the seventies and eighties, "Quest for Love" and "Somewhere in Time". Like "Quest for Love" it also plays with the idea of alternate realities and of altering time; Starks makes a number of trips into the future, into differing versions of 2007. (In one, for example, Jackie is a waitress, in another she is a nurse). Starks has to resolve the paradox of how he can be alive in a future in which he is already "dead" and to use his knowledge of the future to try to prevent not only his own death in 1993 but also that of Jackie's mother Jean who we learn died in a fire some time during the period between 1993 and 2007.
The best thing about the film is the performance of Adrien Brody as Starks. I was very impressed with Brody after seeing him in his Oscar-winning role in "The Pianist", but had not seen much of him since that film came out in 2002. (Apart from "The Jacket", the only one of his subsequent films that I have seen is "The Village). Brody does not have classic "film-star looks", but in both "The Pianist" and "The Jacket" he is able to turn his looks to his advantage, using his long, gaunt face to suggest a haunted man suffering both physically and mentally. Kris Kristofferson is also good as the psychiatrist Dr Becker, a man who in his quest for scientific knowledge has lost sight of his humanity, although I was rather disappointed by Keira Knightley as Jackie; this is not one of her better films.
I would not rate "The Jacket" as highly as either "Quest for Love" or "Somewhere in Time"; the theme is not handled as clearly and the plot tends to become excessively complex and ambiguous in the second half of the theme. Nevertheless, it is an intellectually ambitious film, a welcome exception to the post "Star Wars" assumption that all science-fiction films must be huge blockbusters dominated by special effects, and worth seeing if only for Brody's contribution. 6/10
The other main character in the film is a young woman named Jackie, whom Starks briefly met as a young girl shortly before the murder of the policeman. In 2007 Jackie, now in her twenties, tells Starks that he died on 1st January 1993, only a few days after he entered the mental hospital in December 1992, so cannot be who he says he is.
The film is reminiscent of two great time-travel romances from the seventies and eighties, "Quest for Love" and "Somewhere in Time". Like "Quest for Love" it also plays with the idea of alternate realities and of altering time; Starks makes a number of trips into the future, into differing versions of 2007. (In one, for example, Jackie is a waitress, in another she is a nurse). Starks has to resolve the paradox of how he can be alive in a future in which he is already "dead" and to use his knowledge of the future to try to prevent not only his own death in 1993 but also that of Jackie's mother Jean who we learn died in a fire some time during the period between 1993 and 2007.
The best thing about the film is the performance of Adrien Brody as Starks. I was very impressed with Brody after seeing him in his Oscar-winning role in "The Pianist", but had not seen much of him since that film came out in 2002. (Apart from "The Jacket", the only one of his subsequent films that I have seen is "The Village). Brody does not have classic "film-star looks", but in both "The Pianist" and "The Jacket" he is able to turn his looks to his advantage, using his long, gaunt face to suggest a haunted man suffering both physically and mentally. Kris Kristofferson is also good as the psychiatrist Dr Becker, a man who in his quest for scientific knowledge has lost sight of his humanity, although I was rather disappointed by Keira Knightley as Jackie; this is not one of her better films.
I would not rate "The Jacket" as highly as either "Quest for Love" or "Somewhere in Time"; the theme is not handled as clearly and the plot tends to become excessively complex and ambiguous in the second half of the theme. Nevertheless, it is an intellectually ambitious film, a welcome exception to the post "Star Wars" assumption that all science-fiction films must be huge blockbusters dominated by special effects, and worth seeing if only for Brody's contribution. 6/10