Jacket, The
Also reviewed by:
Slick
The Jacket opens with the line "I was twenty-seven the first time I died". This was always going to be a difficult statement to back up. The premise of the film is great, an interesting concept which deals with the life of a veteran of the first Gulf War. It’s one of those films that always holds promise, like a girl who leads you on. She’ll give you a kiss every now and then but she ain’t never gonna let you touch her tits. But maybe she won’t let you near them because they aren’t real and she’s a man and you would ultimately be disappointed.
To me, the film was made in the wake of Donnie Darko and tries too hard to go with that feel, using choppy visuals and subliminal flashback images as the main character is used for experiments under the guise of 'curing’ him of a mental condition he may or may not have. As part of these treatments he is able to time travel to see the future after his death. And how his death effects others around him. Sound familiar? But whereas Donnie Darko was fulfilling in that it explained (to a certain degree) how all these things happened and it connected the dots, The Jacket does not, and it is unable to reel in the various subplots and ideas. The final ten minutes in particular seems misguided and disconnected to the rest of the story. And where Darko used visual style to enhance the film, The Jacket is often style for the sake of video-editing ideas that do not necessarily relate to the film.
Adrien Brody is good in the lead role though not wholly convincing. He slightly over-acts the dramatics and, at some points, doesn’t quite fit into place. Kiera Knightley is much better than I had expected, considering the way she pouts her way through her other films. But both are let down by a film which never seems to get to where it’s headed and really tries to be something it is not.
If only the writers had pulled the plot reigns tighter. That was the main feeling I was left with, "if only".