Film: The Jacket

Adrien Brody is strapped into a straitjacket and locked in a drawer, which projects him into the future. Tempting as it is to say that 100 minutes locked in a drawer would be more entertaining than The Jacket, it's not that bad. Sadly, nor is it particularly interesting or worthwhile.

This is almost the opposite of 12 Monkeys: Brody is sent forward in time from an asylum in order to save himself. 12 Monkeys is a great film and a favourite of mine. It's also funny, inventive and has decent characters; again, the opposite of The Jacket. About the only thing they have in common is that the viewer is never left in any real doubt that time travel is taking place. Rather implausibly, Brody's doctors come to accept this too and defy all common sense and Hippocratic oaths.

Brody comes across as alternately a wide-eyed innocent and insufferably smug - the latter usually when he has slept with Keira Knightley. (And am I the only one to find it slightly creepy that after sleeping with her adult self, he is very touchy-feely with the same character as a young girl?) Knightley is believable against type as a really, y'know, edgy character, and while there is a decent reason for this, it doesn't make her more interesting to watch. The whole film is unrelentingly dark with very little humour but without grabbing the audience's sympathy, what's the point?

Overall, this is one of those films that is inexplicably described as complex or hard to follow by many reviewers; it's a simple idea that could have been a more interesting film but is ultimately a bit of a bore.