Billed as a psychological thriller the beginning of The Jacket takes you on such a tangent that by the time the film really starts you are just left to wonder, “How the hell did they end up here?”
The Jacket isn’t confusing it is just disjointed as it seems the writers didn’t exactly know how to get their characters together so they just conjured up some cockeyed crap and filled up the first 15 minutes of the film with pieces of a story just so they could get to what they really wanted to tell.
We are first introduced to Jack Starks (Brody) as he is severely wounded in the Gulf War, overcoming death we are quickly whisked into the future where Starks is now walking down a road in Vermont, this is where the WTF factor comes in, how the hell did he get here?
Nevertheless, he is a travelin’ man now and suddenly finds himself in quite the predicament in which he ultimately is wrongly accused of murder and thanks to a bout of amnesia is not able to defend himself, landing him in an asylum, where Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) is developing a heavy course of experimental treatment on the nut jobs inside. Problem is, Starks isn’t a nut job.
So begins our twisted tale of time-traveling intrigue that does get slightly more interesting as the story goes on, but never really turns into anything more than a barely watchable film.
While the story may be lacking, the star power is not as Oscar-winner Adrien Brody and the rising star, Keira Knightley, head up this cast with Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh along for the ride.
Brody’s accomplishments speak for themselves, but this is also the first time we get to see Miss Knightley trying out her American accent and I must say I was not impressed. Every word from the first seemed like forced acting and I was never able to believe her character for a minute thanks to the distracting vocal changes.
Fans of Knightley will be happy to see her shed her clothes for this one, but a simple nude scene of one of Hollywood’s hottest actresses is hardly reason to sit through a semi-entertaining film, and “semi-entertaining” is pushing it.
The Jacket had promise along with an intriguing trailer, but ultimately this one falls flat as the story never is able to figure itself out leaving me wandering the back roads of Vermont wondering what happened to Knightley’s British accent.
