The Jacket

Drama, Fantasy, Thriller

Adrien Brody	Jack Starks
Keira Knightley	Jackie Price
Kris Kristofferson	Dr. Thomas Becker
Jennifer Jason Leigh	Dr. Lorenson
Kelly Lynch	Jean Price
Brad Renfro	The Stranger
Daniel Craig	Rudy Mackenzie
Steven Mackintosh	Dr. Hopkins
Brendan Coyle	Damon
Mackenzie Phillips	Nurse Harding

Director	John Maybury
Producer	George Clooney; Peter Guber
Writer	Tom Bleecker; Marc Rocco

When you put on The Jacket, prepare for a head-trip into fragmented reality. Coproducer Steven Soderbergh might have fared better with this mind-bender than British director John Maybury (who indulges an excess of heavy-handed "style"), but it's intriguing enough to hold your attention as Gulf War veteran Jack Starks (Adrian Brody) sustains a head-wound that results in amnesia and fragmented timelines. One involves Jack's apparent killing of a policeman, after which he's institutionalized and subjected to straight-jacketed experiments in sensory isolation (with Kris Kristofferson as the doctor in charge); the other is a possible future involving a nihilistic waitress (Keira Knightley) with connections to his past, and the discovery that Jack will die in four days if he can't solve the brain-teasing puzzle he's fallen into. The Jacket aspires to the cleverness of Memento and falls short of that target, but Brody gives this exercise in desperate disorientation a certain gravitas that keeps you watching as his tormenting visions begin to unravel. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brad Renfro and Kelly Lynch make the most of their small supporting roles. --Jeff Shannon