In the grand tradition of Halle Berry following her Oscar win for Monster's Ball with a starring role in Gothika, Oscar-winner Adrien Brody follows his performance in The Pianist with a starring role in The Jacket, an overcooked supernatural thriller that has more than a little in common with Gothika, as much as it would like you to think it has loftier ambitions.
Brody plays Jack Starks, a military man who is shot in the head and almost killed in 1991's Gulf War. Discharged seemingly without any sort of support system, he's wandering the Vermont countryside a year later when he comes upon little girl Jackie and her mother Jean and helps them fix their truck. A little further down the road, he's picked up by a young man in a station wagon and then left on the side of the road when the driver kills a cop and takes off.
That's quite a lot to digest, but it's only the setup, as Jack is arrested for the murder and sent to an asylum for the criminally insane because he can't remember the crime he didn't commit. Like Berry's Dr. Miranda Grey in Gothika, Jack encounters a strange mystery in the hospital that he hopes can help clear his name. Subject to an unorthodox treatment that finds him strapped into a straitjacket and shoved into a morgue drawer (for reasons that are barely explained), Jack discovers he can travel 15 years into the future, where he meets the older version of Jackie (Keira Knightley) and learns that he's set to die in four days.
Screenwriter Massy Tadjedin and director John Maybury throw a lot of balls into the air, and for a while they create some genuine suspense and mystery about what's going on. Before too long, though, the film gets bogged down in unanswered questions, red herrings and secondary characters, including the mad scientist (Kris Kristofferson) who locked Jack up in the first place, and a sympathetic doctor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) who might be willing to help him.
Tadjedin and Maybury then blow the opportunity to tie things up with a revelation or two, and the ending is a giant anticlimax that only gets more frustrating the more you think about it. Jack seems to forget about proving his innocence of the cop killing, or avoiding his death, or stopping the inhumane practices at the asylum.
Instead the filmmakers head him toward a ridiculously sunny resolution that focuses on minor points at the expense of the supposedly important questions the film raises. Never mind the unaddressed creepiness of Jack starting an affair with the older version of a cute little girl that he's simultaneously trying to help.
Knightley overcompensates for being out of period pieces and romantic comedies, overacting wildly as Jackie, full of tics and jitters that are far more distracting than illuminating. Sadly, Brody comes off well only by comparison. If he isn't careful, he'll end up in Catwoman 2.