|
|
There has been a persistant onslaught of Hollywood-made Horror films streaming into theatres for the past few months (Hide and Seek, The Boogeyman, Cursed, White Noise, The Ring Two) and there are more to come (House of Wax, Dark Water, The Amityville Horror), all full of tepid scares and brainless banter, in the tradition of Wes Craven or Tobe Hooper (although even they gave some creepy charm to there outings), but what John Maybury has attempted to create with The Jacket is a psychological thriller in the tradition of Hitchcock or DePalma or Cronenberg, and he almost does it - almost.
Okay, saying that he almost succeeded might be stretching it a bit, but Maybury does seem to give it a valiant effort - even if he has tacked on a typically generic happy ending. The story of Jack Starks (Adrian Brody), a Desert Storm vet who is unwittingly involved with the murder of a policeman (his oh-so convenient amnesia keeps him from telling the truth about what happened - he is innocent after all) and is confined to a psychiatric hospital, where he meets Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), an "experimental" kind of Healer who wants to help, but goes a rather Spanish Inquosition-like path toward patient betterment (think Albert Schweitzer meets Dr. Szell from the Marathon Man). Straightjacketed up and locked into a morgue drawer overnight, Jack begins to experience hallucinations. But these are more than mere hallucinations - Jack seems to be time travelling to the future. A future where he meets Jackie Price (Kiera Knightly), a grown-up version of a little girl he once helped alongside the road (just a few hours prior to the shooting that put him in the mental hospital).
The Jacket isn't full of holes so much as it is full of lead, pulling it down into an abyss of nonsensical ramblings by a madman - which is a style that Maybury may have been going for in the first place. I must admit that I have never seen a Maybury film before, but have heard great things about his experimental avant-garde filmmaking before, but now that Hollywood has come a-callin'...alas poor Yoorick...
Although ruddled with a few fun moments - the extremely under-appreciated Daniel Craig is a too-seldom-seen highlight as a fellow mental patient - The Jacket only manages to succeed on the most artificial level of filmmaking - even if Maybury seems to be giving it his all. And being a much better treat than the long line of seemingly endless "Horror" films spewing forth from Hollywood these days, Maybury has tacked on the most ridiculously stank-ridden piece of offal ending, full of Hollywooder-esque happy-shmappiness, where everything is just a barrell of fucking rose petals.
It's such a shame that Adrian Brody has fallen the way of so many other Oscar winning actors and ended up sludging through a post-Oscar-apocalyptic garbage barge of work. Sure, it's a good thing that Cuba Gooding Jr. and Marisa Tomei did that, but someone with the talent of Brody should be doing something more substantial than a would-be thriller and Diet pepsi commercials.
- March 9, 2005
|
|
