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	Grade: B | Genre: Science Fiction/Horror Summary: The Jacket is definitely worth a spot on your 'to-see' list. What it may lack in originality, it definitely makes up for through Brody's performance and a well-crafted composition by Maybury.

Starring: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Kelly Lynch
Director: John Maybury

If you stuck Memento and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest into a giant mixing bowl and stirred furiously, you'd have something close to the Jacket. While that is not necessarily a bad thing since it samples idea lines from two high quality films, it doesn't say much for this film's originality. Thankfully the film has Adrien Brody and director John Maybury to put this work on their collective shoulders to make the Jacket more effective than it probably should be.

The film opens in Iraq in 1991 to erratic scenes of war erupting all around. We are introduced to Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) just as he takes a shot point blank to the head. By some fluke of nature, he survives yet he is afflicted with amnesia as payment for his life. He ominously labels that event as the first time he died. Flash forward about a year and we see him fix an ill starting car for a little girl and her sauced mother (Kelly Lynch). He makes an instant connection to the girl and gives her his dog tags before the mother violently drives off. A second later, Starks picks the wrong cowboy to hitch a ride with (Brad Renfro in a throw away role) then ends up glazed by a bullet and falsely accused of murdering a police officer. His amnesic condition gets him committed to an institution for the insane very reminiscent of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I kept waiting for Nurse Ratched to appear around the corner. So basically after 20 years, the stereotypes of these facilities are firmly intact I'm sad to report.

Kris Kristofferson plays a doctor performing highly questionable treatment methods. For the criminal (as he refers to them) patents that are committed to his care, he pumps them full of drugs before strapping them up in a straight jacket and sliding them into a morgue locker to give them time to reflect on their misdeeds while the drugs kick in. Yes all those buried alive fears you have sprout and start impatiently pulling on your nerves. Inexplicably, this drug/jacket/morgue locker combination triggers the patent to clearly see events in their life echoing from the past, present and even future. These moments in the locker are handled very nicely with harsh shutter shots with pulsing Tricky-esque, dirty trip hop music creating this process of the mind vomiting.

Suddenly, we see Jack standing outside a diner in the deathly cold where he meets Jackie (Keira Knightley) who is kind enough to let him stay the night at his place. Jackie has been worn by the world, heavy on the alcohol and light on the hope. Knightley play her perfectly most notably for her husky voice that adds years of grime this character has trudged through. Jack inadvertently finds his dog tags as well as a picture of Jackie and her mom circa when he assisted them with the car. Through this, it's revealed that he's somehow opened up a window into 2007 where he looks the same as 1992 but everyone else has aged appropriately. He blows Jackie's mind with all of this since in her reality, he died in January 1993...a mere three days after he is in the locker in the previous reality. When they pull him out of the locker, he resumes his life in 1992 with his fresh knowledge culled from the future. The only way for him to etch out additional pieces of this puzzle about his imminent death is to engineer ways to get strapped back up in the jacket.

As you can tell, this story has significant complexities wrapped up in Jack's amnesia and the time jumping sequences. This was worrisome because in the hands of a lesser actor and director this film could have quickly descended into muddled chaos. Maybury keeps the story very focused and has us hot on his heels through each plot twist as well as trying to add plausibility to a story that continually attempts to bend reality as sci-fi loves to do. Brody does a fantastic job making us believe this is all actually happening to him. His emotion and feeling strap us into that straight jacket with him, pounding at the locker door as we slowly lose our precarious grip on our mind. Brody is quietly sealing his place as one of the premier actor's working in Hollywood today.

The ending takes a couple interesting turns and we see Jack for the man that he is without it sinking into sentimentality. Of course, there is a romantic relationship that sparks between Jack and Jackie but its negligible. It doesn't really add anything to the film landscape yet it doesn't distract from it either. In all, the Jacket is definitely worth a spot on your 'to-see' list. What it may lack in originality, it definitely makes up for through Brody's performance and a well-crafted composition by Maybury. If you want to continue to witness the recent ascent of Adrian Brody, be sure to check out the quirky, painfully funny Dummy. His character could give Napoleon Dynamite a run for his money for most awkward role caught on film last year.

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