Review of The Jacket (2005) by Manny C — 11 Apr 2011

Talk about a derivative thriller. The Jacket wants to be something like, say, Memento meets A Clockwork Orange, but instead it only comes off as something more like The Butterfly Effect. Adrien Brody is Jack, a Gulf War soldier who loses his memory after suffering a head injury, and then he's accused of killing a cop when he returns home to Vermont. So a nutty doc (Kris Kristofferson, the best thing in this movie) puts him in a straitjacket, drugs him up and messes with his brain, resulting in some time-travel on Jack's part, where he must find a woman he once helped (Kelly Lynch) and seek her now-grown daughter (Keira Knightley) to clear his name.

Or something like that. Director John Maybury can't create much in the way of suspense since the script is overloaded with one too many plots and subplots. We have Daniel Craig playing a mental patient and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a doctor, then Knightley gets nude, yadda yadda yadda. It wants to be head-spinning awesome but all it is is Hollywood formula piffle.