The Jacket
Director: John Maybury
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.0
Desert Storm vet Adrien Brody may or may not be able to 'correct' his own life and save himself from death in this dual-narrative jigsaw puzzle that never comes together - in a psychiatric clinic and under an experimental procedure (sensory deprivation, it seems), he's able to mentally transport himself to the future and bring the information learned there "back" to the present. This is all done with an abundance of style from director John Maybury, who likes flash cuts and stretching out faces into contorted shapes (too much Francis Bacon, I presume) and is capped off in a very unlikely 'positive' ending - had the story not been so disjointed already, the summation might have been a real laugh. I can't buy the dreamy Keira Knightley as white trash, but Brody and Jennifer Jason Leigh (as his nurse) are perfectly cast. At the very least, it's better than the high-minded but equally pell-mell Primer.
