Cady's Take:

In the beginning we meet Jack Starks (Adrian Brody), who hitches a ride with a bad guy (Brad Renfro) and ends up on trial for murdering a police officer. Starks cannot remember what exactly happened during said incident due to a war injury he received while fighting in the Gulf War. So, the jury finds him guilty by reason of insanity and sends him to a hospital for the criminally insane.

There, he becomes an experimental study for Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), a scientist who pumps him full of drugs, ties him in a straightjacket, and locks him in a morgue drawer for sensory deprivation with the purpose of "peeling away some layers of hate". Inside the drawer he is able to see into his future and learns that he is going to die on New Year's Eve, 1992 while still living in the asylum.

As he travels forward in time he meets up with Jackie (Keira Knightley), a bitter truck stop waitress, and makes a heart-stopping discovery about his own past. Now the two must unravel the mystery of his death in 2007 to prevent it in 1993.

The Jacket is an interesting failure. It gives you a lot to think about, but in the end, not much to care about. The ideas explored here have been done before, and done better. Honestly, in my opinion this was a rip-of of " 12 Monkeys".

I am not sure what it is about insane asylums. Perhaps those who make movies feel that simply placing their main character(s) in a mental hospital will provide instant tension and drama. Instead, it usually ends up feeling manufactured and contrived. "The Jacket", like "Gothika", places a murder mystery in an asylum, adds some convenient supernatural elements, and voila ! A movie is born. I guess.

Adrien Brody plays Jack Starks, an Iraq war (1991) veteran who experiences blackouts and visions after being shot in the head by a young boy while overseas. Upon returning home he is committed for a murder that naturally he did not commit, but cannot prove because of the blackouts. Blackouts are so convenient for placing Movie Heroes in Unsettling Circumstances.

Jack knows he is not crazy, but he feels like he is crazy, especially when he realizes that the Cruel and Unconventional Treatments he is receiving at the hands of Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) are allowing him to time travel (hint: time traveling is also a convenient plot device that allows screenwriters, directors, and actors to move through time and space without having to worry about continuity or cohesiveness). He attempts to prevent his own death with knowledge he gains via the time travel. Whether he is successful I will leave to mystery. Is the time travel in his mind? Is he physically traveling into the future? The movie never bothers to explain. Actually, it probably never occurred to anyone to find out.

"The Jacket" is a hack job that provides more laughs than chills. If you are in the mood for a good insane asylum movie, rent "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".