I can sum up this movie for you in one sentence: 12 Butterfly Monkeys Flew Over Donnie Darko's Ladder.
The Jacket is really a stew made from pieces of Donnie Darko, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the Butterfly Effect, 12 Monkeys and Jacob's Ladder. The thing about this stew is that the flavors all mesh nicely, and don't compete too much. It's a little bland, and probably doesn't deserve a full-on BAM! but it's better than canned soup.
This movie is a weird kind of psychedelic time travel paranoid thriller. Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) is a soldier in Desert Storm, and he gets shot in the head. Flash forward to years later, he's wandering down a lonely stretch of road and he runs into a little girl and her mother who are broken down by the side of the road. He fixes their car and continues on his way, until he's picked up by some guy who goes on to shoot a highway patrolman and frame Jack for the murder. Jack is found guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to treatment at a mental facility. The head doctor (Kris Kristofferson) utilizes some strange methods in his attempted treatment of his patients. The orderlies strap Jack into a straight jacket, fill him full of drugs, and stick him in a morgue drawer for 8 hours.
While Jack is in the drawer, he somersaults through time to find the little girl that he helped by the side of the road all grown up now. They fall in love, and she tells Jack that he died inside the mental institution. Now Jack has to figure out how he died and who killed him before time catches up with him. Basically, every time they take Jack out of the drawer, he knows a lot of stuff about the future that he shouldn't know.
It's a fairly interesting little concept, and it would probably be a lot more entertaining if it didn't feel so familiar. It's well-acted and directed with style. I can't find any flaws with the execution of the movie, and the production is slick and glossy. The main problem with the movie, and the reason I'm not giving it a higher grade, is that it's too familiar. That familiarity comes from having seen elements of the Jacket in all the movies I mentioned above. If the Jacket had been made before Donnie Darko or 12 Monkeys, it might have felt vanguard and unique, but as it is, this just winds up being a little bland for my taste.
The Jacket is really a stew made from pieces of Donnie Darko, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the Butterfly Effect, 12 Monkeys and Jacob's Ladder. The thing about this stew is that the flavors all mesh nicely, and don't compete too much. It's a little bland, and probably doesn't deserve a full-on BAM! but it's better than canned soup.
This movie is a weird kind of psychedelic time travel paranoid thriller. Jack Starks (Adrien Brody) is a soldier in Desert Storm, and he gets shot in the head. Flash forward to years later, he's wandering down a lonely stretch of road and he runs into a little girl and her mother who are broken down by the side of the road. He fixes their car and continues on his way, until he's picked up by some guy who goes on to shoot a highway patrolman and frame Jack for the murder. Jack is found guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to treatment at a mental facility. The head doctor (Kris Kristofferson) utilizes some strange methods in his attempted treatment of his patients. The orderlies strap Jack into a straight jacket, fill him full of drugs, and stick him in a morgue drawer for 8 hours.
While Jack is in the drawer, he somersaults through time to find the little girl that he helped by the side of the road all grown up now. They fall in love, and she tells Jack that he died inside the mental institution. Now Jack has to figure out how he died and who killed him before time catches up with him. Basically, every time they take Jack out of the drawer, he knows a lot of stuff about the future that he shouldn't know.
It's a fairly interesting little concept, and it would probably be a lot more entertaining if it didn't feel so familiar. It's well-acted and directed with style. I can't find any flaws with the execution of the movie, and the production is slick and glossy. The main problem with the movie, and the reason I'm not giving it a higher grade, is that it's too familiar. That familiarity comes from having seen elements of the Jacket in all the movies I mentioned above. If the Jacket had been made before Donnie Darko or 12 Monkeys, it might have felt vanguard and unique, but as it is, this just winds up being a little bland for my taste.