The Jacket
Question: How does anyone read this script and not have to toss it aside thanks to all the blood that's suddenly started to spurt from their eyes? Really, this film's script and dialogue is just atrocious. Brody and Knightley both deserve standing ovations for their performances here because, frankly, they elevate the material to a postition far above where it deserves to be (the trash bin being its proper place, of course). The director's plan seemed to be to turn a bunch of flashy shots of Brody's eyes, a barely-there nude shot of Knightley and the line "You gotta believe me!" into a cohesive whole. Guess what? Doesn't quite work. For Bond megafans, you can get a glimpse of Bond-to-be Daniel Craig as Brody's insane asylum pal. My grade: C-Avg. Critic's Score: 5.4 (via Rotten Tomatoes)
Avg. Viewer's Score: 6.8 (via Imdb)
Synopsis: A military veteran returns to his native Vermont suffering from bouts of amnesia. When he is accused of murder and lands in an asylum, a well-meaning doctor puts him on a heavy course of experimental drugs, restrains him in a jacket-like device, and locks him away in a body drawer of the basement morgue. The process sends him on a journey into the future, where he can foresee his death (but not who did it or how) in four days' time. Now the only question that matters is: can the woman he meets in the future save him? (via Yahoo)
Director: John Maybury (Love Is The Devil)
Writers: Massy Tadjedin (Leo), Tom Bleecker and Marc Rocco (Where the Day Takes You)
Stars: Adrien Brody (The Pianist), Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean), Kris Kristofferson (Blade), Jennifer Jason Leigh (eXistenZ), Kelly Lynch (Drugstore Cowboy), Daniel Craig (Road to Perdition), Laura Marano
Useless Trivia: Scenes of Adrien Brody sobbing in the body drawer were real. He had asked director John Maybury to keep him locked in even when they weren't filming so he could get the feel of the character's despair. Eventually, Brody lost it during filming, and Maybury caught it on tape.
2 Comments:
I've seen this one a couple of weeks ago, and thought the exact same thing - great movie aside from the crappiest story and script ever written (aside of revenge of the sith of course).
Don't people actually read scripts before they put millions of dollars into producing them into movies?!
Now I feel guilty and lowbrow for liking it. Because I did--like it. All that really stuck with me was Brody's performance, though, so I could very well have been too mesmerized by that to notice much else.
We saw this around the same time (maybe even the same night) as we saw "Primer," a movie whose plot and dialogue actually HURT MY BRAIN, so maybe I was just relieved to see a charismatic actor and to be able to keep up with the whole time-travel paradox thing.
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