If you were lucky enough to snag a DVD rental or “previously viewed” copy from your local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video store just before their demise, you already know The Jacket (2005). It’s one of those movies that the majority of us who checked it out are still recommending to people to this day. It’s a dark, brooding but hopeful film that sometimes will remind you of Donnie Darko from a few years previous. Or maybe The Machinist (2004). Definitely The Butterfly Effect (2004).
We liked our dark emotional thrillers wrapped in heart wrenching love stories back then.
The initial thing that drove me and my little black parade towards The Jacket was Adrien Brody. It seems weird to call a guy with two Academy Awards (The Pianist, The Brutalist) underrated but in his case, the shoe fits. Despite all the great films in his filmography, it still seems as though he’s been taken for granted in Hollywood. Alas, he’s the perfect lead for this story. The kind of guy who looks like he’s got some pain behind those eyes. Who’s been through some shit but still has a kind heart. A tortured soul like Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson (2006) or Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). We really were in a mood in the mid-2000’s, eh?
In The Jacket, Adrien Brody plays Jack Starks, who’s shot in the head by a child he was trying to help during the Gulf War. He briefly dies on the table but survives, albeit with sudden bouts of amnesia. He’s walking down a snowy boulevard of broken dreams (the icy backdrop of the entire film is as beautiful as it is depressing) when he comes across a small girl and her drugged out mother. He fixes their truck for them and even gives the little girl his dog tags. A hitchhiker then picks him up but kills a cop that pulls them over, leaving Jack, who can’t remember what happened, to take the fall for it.
Jack is found guilty by insanity and sentenced to a mental hospital where Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) starts doing cruel mental experiments on him. They break into his cell late at night and violently jab him with a syringe full of mystery medicine, wrap him in a straitjacket, and lock him in a morgue drawer for an extended period of time. There, he starts to have jarring visions and eventually finds himself actually travelling through time while in this cube ‘o death. I realize it sounds like the film just jumped the proverbial shark but it hasn’t. When you think about all the mental trauma he’s had, the fact that he’s been dead before, had a literal bullet in his brain, and is being subjected to these wild experiments, this actually turns into one of the most realistic time travel situations I’ve seen in a film.
From there, Jack mysteriously finds himself in the path of Jackie (Keira Knightley), the little girl whom he’d helped on the side of the road all those years ago, as a chain smoking, vodka chugging adult. She’s a miserable person who had a hard life after her mom died from burning alive due to passing out with a cigarette. The two find a connection together through their shared pain in this cruel world, sleep together and fall in love. It’s actually very awkward because the last time they met she was a little kid. It’s kind of like in Back to the Future when Marty’s own mother tries to hit on him. Time travel movies are weird, man. It’s a love story with a gnarly thorn in its side, however. Because, you know, he’s actually somewhere else, with a needle in his arm, inside of a goddamn morgue drawer traveling through time. Which makes relationships hard!
The two then investigate what’s happening to other timeline Jack, who this mysterious Dr. Becker is, and also grapple with the fact that Jack learns the date of his own death. Which, as fate would have it, is coming quite soon and it’s rather unavoidable!
The Jacket is one of those movies where the premise during the first half of the film is so genius, it ends up working against the second half of the film (this may be why it was received with such critical dismissiveness; the audience scores are more favorable). This story is so original and earnest that it feels as if it’s headed somewhere earth shattering. When, in reality, it’s just a heartbreaking story about two broken people finding each other. What seemed like the next mind-bending jaw dropper was simply a love story in disguise.
The road to get there was none the less dark, twisted, and fascinating. The Jacket also includes some amazing performances and shockingly ahead of its time casting choices. Daniel Craig plays a fellow mental patient who may or may not have tried to kill his wife on forty-seven different occasions. There’s an entire One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest storyline at play as Craig’s character, Rudy, and Jack try to understand what Dr. Becker is up to and what “being crazy” really means. You’ll both wonder how nobody discovered the insane talent of Daniel Craig earlier and how in the Hell someone looked at this wild-ass, rugged character and saw James Bond (which would come a year later with Casino Royale). I guess it’s called acting, folks.
Then there’s Dr. Beth (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who’s sympathetic but ultimately powerless in the situation. She’s able to add another overwhelmed but not quite broken character to the bleak landscape of the film. And there’s of course Keira Knightley, who is, in fact, over-doing the whole “Fiona Apple in the Criminal video” thing, but the over-dramatics sort of fit the world they’re in. Which feels almost like a more rural version of the atmosphere in something like The Crow. It’s all quite depressing… but it can’t rain all the time.
Though mostly a Sci-Fi Thriller, the horror of The Jacket is multi-faceted. There’s the physical horror moments of being harshly stabbed with a large needle at odd angles and being thrown into a morgue drawer; or being shot in the head, dying, and then coming back to life. Finally, there’s the horror of living a life of terrible luck. A good man sent to war, shot by a child, left lonely and drifting through a snowy landscape like an even sadder Rambo and ultimately being framed for murder. The helplessness of being sent to live in a cold mental institution when you don’t feel crazy. All while carrying the guilt of a crime you know you’d never commit. It’s pure misery. Pure horror.
Overall, the scariest (and saddest) thing about The Jacket is just how fragile the lives around us really are. How one tiny decision like smoking a cigarette in bed or one moment of bad luck like slipping on a patch of ice can tragically alter the course of the one and only life we’re given. Though the movie ends on a rather simple and even hopeful note that may have underwhelmed some, I feel like it’s more of a revelation that no matter how painful our lives can be, if we can make just one person’s life better by being a part of it? It’s all worth it.
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