THE JACKET

'''The Jacket''' is a 2005 psychological thriller, directed by John Maybury. Massy Tadjedin wrote the screenplay based on a story by Tom Bleecker and Marc Rocco. The original music score is composed by Brian Eno and the cinematography is by Peter Deming. The film is marketed with the tagline "Terror has a new name."

Contents

Plot summary

Themes

Similar stories

Main cast

References

External links

Plot summary

After miraculously recovering from a bullet wound to the head, Gulf War veteran Jack Starks returns to Vermont suffering from amnesia. He is accused of murdering a police officer, and is incarcerated in a mental institution in the year 1992.
In the ward, Starks becomes subject to the experiments of Dr. Thomas Becker, a psychiatrist. Starks is injected with an experimental drug and put into a straitjacket; he is then locked in a morgue drawer. While in this condition, Jack's mind sends him into the future of the closing week of 2007, where among other things he discovers that he is destined to die in four days from his first incarcaration in the drawer in 1992.

Themes

The film embodies the conflict between free will vs fate. The film suggests that we, like Jack Starks are all bound by an inevitable fate, but what we choose to do in the time given defines who we are and affects those around us. Jack, by the end of the movie, has accepted he will die and instead of attempting to prevent his death he decides instead to change Jackie and Jean's life for the better. The morgue drawer that Jack is imprisoned in acts as a significant metaphor for death.
Other themes explored involve the effect of war on soldiers, shown through fast edits and gradual transitions which emphasize Jack Starks' paranoia and trauma. After being discharged from the military, he wanders alone, cast out by society.

Similar stories

★ ''The Jacket'' shares its title, and the idea of a person experiencing extra-corporeal time-travel while in an intolerably tight straitjacket, with a 1915 novel by Jack London. The novel was published in the United Kingdom as ''The Jacket'' and in the United States of America as ''The Star Rover''. Director Maybury has said that the film is "loosely based on a true story that became a Jack London story."op. cit.. (The "true story" is that of Ed Morrell, who told London about San Quentin prison's inhumane use of tight straitjackets).

★ ''The Jacket'' is essentially a reversal of the time travel theme found in the 2004 film ''The Butterfly Effect''. Instead of traveling into the past to fix the present, Starks travels into the future to fix the past (or present, depending on how you look at it).

★ The plot of the 1990 film ''Jacob's Ladder'' has a number of similarities with ''The Jacket''. Protagonists from both films have near-death experiences while serving in the military and both experience what appears to be post-traumatic stress disorder. The character of Jacob Singer in ''Jacob's Ladder'' is able to glimpse a possible future as seen from purgatory (which Singer erroneously thinks is caused by his exposure to a drug in Vietnam); Singer is also helped by his chiropractor. Compare Singer's role with that of Jack Starks in ''The Jacket'': Starks is able to time-travel into the future with the help of a drug given to him by a physician in the "hellish" setting of a psychiatric ward where he is falsely incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit. Also, several versions of movie posters from both films are similar.

★ Themes similar to the 1995 film ''12 Monkeys'': both James Cole and Jack Starks are time-travelling convicts who are placed in psychiatric wards and who find it difficult to escape their fate.

★ Thematic elements and dialogue similar to the 1980 film ''Somewhere in Time''.

★ Group therapy scenes reminiscent of the 1975 film ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest''.

Main cast

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

References

External links

★ Official site

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★ Keira Knightley interview for The Jacket