FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Jack Starks is a Persian Gulf veteran who has made his way home. One day, while hitchhiking, he is knocked unconscious and wakes up to find a police officer shot to death across the road. Jack is convicted and sent to a mental institution. Not believing he’s capable of doing such a thing, he begins to search for answers and hopes to remember anything about that horrible day. The doctors, thinking he’s guilty go to extreme measures to rehabilitate him. They place Jack into an empty morgue cabinet at length on several different occasions. It is inside there, that Jack finds himself slowly piecing together more pieces of the puzzle of the murder. However, he’s not sure how much he can trust, because it appears that while inside that cabinet, he can travel through time and gather clues from the future. Maybe he needs the jacket after all.

Well, he might not, but someone certainly deserves it. Massy Tadjedin, the writer, deserves to be locked up for thinking this was acceptable, watchable cinema. The director John Maybury and cinematographer Peter Deming are certifiable as well for believing that style and flashy camera work equals substance. Budding star power and reasonably good acting will not carry a film. Maybe if they would have put on the urine stained looney bin jacket and slid into the morgue cabinet themselves, they would have gone to the future and seen how poorly the movie turned out and could have found clues as to how to make it better.

I think I’m just becoming more adverse to time travel movies that shouldn’t be about time travel (see “Kate & Leopold.” On Second thought, don’t). Maybe it was just handled poorly. I’ve seen some of these same issues and techniques used much more effectively in such movies as “Back to the Future” and “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” Most of this story either makes no sense or is simply meaningless. There’s no great significance to Jack being a soldier. I really think the gimmick of the time travel could have been avoided as well. Having him talk to a ghost of the cop or something along those lines would be better. However, that wouldn’t allow the creepy love story sideline the time travel does. Jack “randomly” meets up with Jackie (a genius stroke of creative naming right up there with Neo from “The Matrix” and Dwan from the 1976 “King Kong”), who just happens to be the grown up version of a little girl he helped along the side of the road that fateful day. Yeah, they do it. It’s creepy. Even though she’s now played by Keira Knightly instead of a six-year old, it still gives off the feel of him doing a six-year old.

The visual side is stylistic, but not in the right way. Instead of creating a creepy, dark and brooding atmosphere that makes you question reality and occasionally your own self worth, the film falls towards a lighter look with hints of dinginess, obtrusive bouncing fancy computer generated camera moves and repetitive, insulting scene transitions. Watching the melee of flashbacks and mind warps the first time he enters the warp zone was bad enough, but to have it repeated every time was its own brand of torture. The camera work was showy and drew attention to itself, when there are better ways to get the feelings of isolation, fear, claustrophobia and uncertainty. In fact, it hurts that emotional reaction because it makes the audience more aware of their place in the audience.

The movie’s not all bad. Just mostly. Daniel Craig plays a great crazy guy. His character provides the only real mystery and serves as virtually the sole point of interest. Too bad he’s not the main character and only appears for around ten minutes. The movie is not scary, it’s not suspenseful, it’s not romantic, and worse, it’s not a good mystery at all, because you know exactly what’s going to happen next most of the time. I wonder if putting the movie in chronological order would have made it better. Jack reappears after however many years and messes around with people’s minds. That would ruin the existing ending, which is really lame by the way. I don’t know. There’s not much fixing this film. Stick it back in the cabinet, give it shock therapy, or pry its eyes open and make it watch good movies until it learns what one looks like. Don’t waste any money on this one. You can find a better jacket at Salvation Army for the same price.

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