Movie-The Jacket

This was a strange movie, and I cant say entirely good strange, but not entirely bad either.

Adrian Brody plays a vet from the first Gulf war with a head injury that causes amnesia, and he is committed to a mental hospital after being found guilty of the murder of a cop which we know he did not commit, but he can't remember the details of.

Well, the lead doctor at this "hospital" has some really strange therapies, one of which involves giving patients a very potent and strange combo of drugs, butting them in a straight jacket and locking them in a coroners drawer.

Now it is never quite clear how hat comes next happens...whether it is due to Brody's character, the injury he received, the drugs, the jacket or the drawer...or some combo of those things, but somehow, in these treatment sessions he travels in time, to the future, and solves his own murder in the past and some other mysteries.

Brody does pretty well with the material given to him. But the problem is, The Jacket (2005) never really figures out how it wants to solve the problems it sets up. How does this happen? Does it happen only to him? Is it the drugs? Can anyone, even those not mentally ill do this? Nothing is clear, not really touched upon.

Keira Knightly, not quite so wafer thin back then, and looking much better, gives a somewhat unconvincing performance as a girlfriend that seems to me would have been much better off as a non-love interest for this damaged man. And Kris Kristofferson was his usual wooden self. And a pre-Bond Daniel Craig was half convincing as a fellow inmate in the hospital.

This movie had some interesting concepts, but lost those in not being careful in taking care of the details. The lead performance was OK, but the supporting roles could have been much stronger and helped the whole film.