The Jacket (2005)

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