The Jacket

Director: John Maybury John Maybury

Overview

"The Adrien Brody trippy sci-fi flick The Jacket comes to DVD in this edition from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Including the matted anamorphic 2.35:1 widescreen image and 5.1 Dolby Digital sound, the disc actually sports a less-than-stellar picture transfer that digitally blocks up the shadows in most of the picture. Hopefully this bit of annoyance is something that will be fixed in future re-releases. Bonus features are a cut above the rest, thankfully. Instead of displaying the deleted scenes in their own menu system, the disc's producers decided to include them in one 27-minute featurette that includes interviews with the director, producer, and stars of the film. Included you'll find an extended steamy sex scene, along with extra small bits of scenes that progress the story beyond the theatrical cut. Also included is a nine-minute clip on the special effects of the film that also features the director along with one of the art directors, Rhian Nicholas. Also available for viewing is the original theatrical trailer, which amounts to a reasonable amount of features for a film that will probably get another expanded release down the road."

Product Details

Release Date:	06/21/2005
UPC:	0085393368524
Original Release:	2005
Rating:	R
Source:	Warner Home Video
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:43:00

Special Features

Closed Caption;The Jacket: Project History and Deleted Scenes; The Look of the Jacket: Special effects featurette; Theatrical trailer

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Adrien Brody	Jack Starks
Keira Knightley	Jackie Price
Kris Kristofferson	Dr. Thomas Becker
Jennifer Jason Leigh	Dr. Lorenson
Daniel Craig	Rudy Mackenzie
Kelly Lynch	Jean Price
Brad Renfro	The Stranger
Jason Lewis	Cop
Jake Broder	Dr. Morgan
Mackenzie Phillips	Nurse Harding
Steven Mackintosh	Dr. Hopkins
Brendan Coyle	Damon
Laura Marano	Little Jackie
Jonah Lotan	Intern
Brian Eno	Composer

Technical Credits

Massy Tadjedin

John Maybury	Director
Massy Tadjedin	Screenwriter
George Clooney	Producer
Peter Guber	Producer
Steven Soderbergh	Producer
Ben Cosgrove	Executive Producer
Mark Cuban	Executive Producer
Jennifer Fox	Executive Producer
Timothy J. Nicholas	Executive Producer
Ori Marmur	Executive Producer
Chris Roberts	Executive Producer,Executive Producer
Todd Wagner	Executive Producer
Peter E. Strauss	Executive Producer
Andreas Grosch	Executive Producer
Alan Grosch	Executive Producer
Colin Nicolson	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Relentlessly stylish, The Jacket is nonetheless a fairly standard whodunit about mental hospital abuse, the Gulf War, and time travel. That's a joke, but it's true that nothing feels quite new in this otherwise solid production -- which seems to be built from original parts, or at least parts that haven't been lumped together before. There's certainly enough in John Maybury's film to keep a viewer interested, particularly the flashy edits and sudden close-ups that approximate the henpecked delusions of Gulf vet Jack Starks (Adrien Brody). But Massy Tadjedin's script doesn't provide a sublime payoff for its foreboding plot details. One crucial episode never gets resolved, which is fine in the real world, but not so fine in the time travel genre, where even minor details typically have a divine purpose. Although it doesn't quite get there, The Jacket is worth watching for the strong performances of Brody and Keira Knightley. Brody gets the shell-shocked quivering down perfectly, playing a man caught in a purgatory between alertness and fugue, sanity and breakdown. The "treatments" he undergoes -- at the hands of a casually malevolent Kris Kristofferson -- are an eerie criticism of institutions whose corruption goes unchecked, because the patients are as likely to be raving conspiracy theorists as credible victims. Knightley, meanwhile, shows she's as comfortable in dark territory as she has been in her previous sunny roles. Despite heavy hitters George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh lending their cachet as producers, The Jacket slipped out of theaters after collecting only six million dollars at the box office.