The Jacket

The Jacket is a 2005 American science-fiction psychological thriller film directed by John Maybury and starring Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh. It is partly based on the 1915 Jack London novel The Star Rover, published in the United Kingdom as The Jacket. 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 narrative is a time slip fantasy in which a Gulf War veteran who suffered a death or near-death experience while on active service returns to the United States where he is blamed for the death of a policeman, and incarcerated in a hospital for the criminally insane. Subject to experimental treatments there, which involve him being shut inside a morgue casket while tied in a straitjacket, he eventually learns to travel through time and is able to offer help to various people. The Jacket premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23, 2005, and was released in theaters in the United States by Warner Independent Pictures on March 4, 2005. It grossed $21.1 million on a budget of $28.5 million and received mixed reviews from critics. Plot After miraculously recovering from an apparently fatal bullet wound to the head, Gulf War veteran Jack Starks returns to Vermont in 1992, suffering from periods of amnesia. While walking, he sees a young girl, Jackie, and her alcoholic mother in despair beside their broken-down truck. Starks and Jackie quickly form a certain affinity; she asks him to give her his dogtags and he does so. He gets the truck started for them and continues on his way. Shortly after, a man driving along the same highway gives Jack a ride and they get pulled over by a policeman.