Review: The Jacket

Director : John Maybury
Main Cast : Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson

Here in Malaysia, we get virtually all the latest big-budget blockbusters the same time they’re released in the States. From the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, to Star Wars, to the gazillion comic superhero flicks, we’re always up to date. However, good independent films very rarely get a chance. One film in recent memory was Saw, a deliciously wicked kind of film, which owed a lot to Se7en.

And here we have The Jacket. A film that promises much, especially after a decent debut at the Sundance Festival for independent films. Sad to say though, the film falls short of expectations.

It’s about army vet Jack Starks who’s found guilty for a murder he didn’t commit, then sent to a mental institution. There he’s the subject of an experiment whereby he’s strapped into the eponymous straightjacket, injected with a cocktail of drugs and then sealed shut in a morgue drawer - the kind you see in TV shows like C.S.I. - for hours at a time. Certainly not for the claustrophobic, then.

But then, things start becoming bizarre. You see, when the drugs take effect, Starks suddenly finds himself in the future, bumping into a girl who was barely 10 years old when he got convicted but now a young adult, and also finding out that he was already dead. And it’s this premise, on which the whole plot hinges upon, is what I personally think failed the film. I mean, it’s a really crazy concept that sounds like it was concocted from one of the mental patients in the film. Was Starks physically transported to the future, or did he appear as some sort of ghost? Or was it all in his mind, hallucinations as a result of the treatment? I think that the writers could’ve focused more on the terrible conditions, as well as the mental and physical effects of the torture he goes through, especially from the claustrophobia of being left all alone in a small and dark morgue drawer.

Adrien Brody is in fine form as the bone-thin Jack Starks. You could say though that the role is merely an amalgamation of his previous roles in The Pianist and The Village. The luscious Keira Knightley, the cheerful everyday English lass as shown so perfectly in Bend It Like Beckham and Love Actually, forays into the "Dark Side'' of acting in her first grown-up role as the dark and brooding Jackie Price. This she does quite well, speaking in a deep voice contradicting her young age and petite figure, in a performance reminiscent of Helena Bonham-Carter's in Fight Club. Knightley has clearly grown up in more ways than one, as shown in a bath scene surprisingly overlooked by the Malaysian censors. Needs to improve on her accent though. We’ll next see Keira as a machine-gun-wielding bounty hunter in Domino. Now that will be interesting.

The Jacket is a nice change to the usual cinema fare, but disappointingly falls short of expectations.