Kicking off with an engrossing start that flows from Jack Stark's (Adrien Brody) experiences in Iraq in 1991 to his eventual drifting in small town, U.S.A. in 1992, The Jacket certainly gets off on the right foot as Stark returns home suffering from amnesia after being wounded in the war only to end-up being falsely accused of murdering a police officer and ending up in an asylum.

Soon enough resident doctor Kris Kristofferson is subjecting him to an highly experimental treatment that has him being injected with an hallucinatory drug, straight-jacketed, and left in sensory deprivation in an morgue drawer for hours at a time. However things go terribly wrong when it turns out he has the power to go into the future (only while in "the jacket"), ending up in 2007.

While in 2007 he meets up with the grown-up version of a little girl he helped right before being arrested (played by Keira Knightley of Pirates Of The Caribbean) and he starts to unravel the truth behind his treatments and uncovers the fact that he's going to die on New Year's Day, 1993 (in less than a week). So it's a race against time as he sets-out to learn about his past, stop Kristofferson's treatments, and change future events for Knightley and others he's befriended.

Director John Maybury has certainly made a movie filled with great visuals and the foggy dream quality of the opening sequence turns out to be highly effective and he keeps the rest of the movie flowing with a good style and plenty of quick cuts to keep you off-balance.

The Jacket overall is an interesting movie with a script by Massy Tadejedin that manages to be pretty original; but unfortunately it moves a bit slowly, there's not quite enough explanation about just how he's able to go into 2007, and we never really manage to "buy" some events - such as Brody and Knightley's characters falling in love, which when you think about it is kind of creepy. And that's too bad as it had the potential to be one of those "mindf*ck" movies you tell all your friends about (and goes on to be a fringe "cult favourite").

Streets on June 21st, go to the Official Website for more info. (Chris Hartley, 6/16/05)

Directed By: John Maybury.
Written By: Massy Tadjedin.

Starring: Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson, Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Picture Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Warner brings The Jacket to DVD with a nice and clean print that holds up well with solid colours and good clarity. There's really not much here to complain about.

Extras: With such an interesting premise and off-beat execution, The Jacket deserves more special features than it's gotten.

We get a trailer, a featurette on "The Look Of The Jacket" all about the visual effects (there's some interesting tidbits in there), and a decent "making of" featurette entitled "Project History & Deleted Scenes" which covers the movie's history while blending in a whole slew of deleted moments.