The Jacket Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)March 1st, 2005
THE JACKET
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): **
"I was twenty-seven years old the first time I died," Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) explains to us in voice-over. Although it begins briefly with the Gulf War in 1991, most of THE JACKET is set in 2007 and in flashback in 1992 when Jack dies a second time. In 2007, Jack enlists the help of the lovely but wasted Jackie (Keira Knightley), an ambitionless alcoholic just like her dead mother. In a previous life, Jack had helped them both when Jackie's drunken mom had truck trouble.
The secret to Jack's time traveling, as he slips back to 1992 to investigate the circumstances of his second death, is a straightjacket and a morgue-like human body drawer where a nefarious Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) likes to lock up his patient in a tortuous form of mental treatment. Refreshing playing something other than a prostitute for a change, Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Dr. Lorenson, a junior physician who dares to question Dr. Becker's horrendous methods.
Like THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT, but not nearly as much fun, THE JACKET is more often tedious than tense, although it does contain a few genuinely disturbing moments. Only briefly as a guilty pleasure -- Knightley has two brief nude scenes -- does the movie have much to offer.
THE JACKET runs 1:42. It is rated R for "violence, language and brief sexuality/nudity" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, March 4, 2005. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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