I do not mean it as a slight when I say that John Maybury's The Jacket plays like an amped-up version of The Outer Limits or The Twilight Zone. It has the same parabolic twists, the same flirtations with the fantastic and supernatural (in this case, blurring the present, future and past), the same symmetrical structure that resolves all events and eventualities. Because it is a full-length, theatrical release, there is, however, room for more plot development, thematic rhyming, eloquent cinematography and restrained, yet vibrant pyrotechnics.

Not a lot of what's going on The Jacket seems new, not really, but stylistic integrity and meticulous detail carry the day. Movie-makers have been playing with the supposedly symbiotic relationship between temporal effect and cause for a very long time so I imagine they had to step carefully when creating The Jacket so as not to seem derivative or lame. Like The Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, it's not exactly Science Fiction, not exactly Thriller, not exactly Horror. It falls somewhere in-between, with its ghoulish tint, its pale pasty looking characters, its torture and hysteria lurking just around the next corner, waiting to shake you the hell up.

In voice-over, Jack Starks, our hero and narrator, tells us at the outset that "I died for the first time...." and initiates the quasi-spiritual journey in which he experiences deaths both great and small, presumably shifting between states of consciousness and rungs on the ladder to enlightenment. Adrien Brody, evoking a very attractive and vaguely melancholy (but not actual) ghost moves from one excruciating episode to the next with brief periods of respite.

Starks is a recent war-veteran revived from what was originally perceived as a fatal head wound. His bouts with amnesia make it impossible to defend himself in a murder trial, so in an act of mercy and judiciousness the jury sends him to a hospital for the criminally insane. There a craggy-faced Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) whose motives are highly suspect at best, has him strait-jacketed, injected with powerful mind-altering drugs and shoved into a drawer reserved for cadavers, all during the wee-hours when this kind of abuse can go undetected.

And lo and behold, this unconscionably horrific process catapults him into the near-future. Starks becomes so hooked on his ability to impact the present with satisfying results (unlike say, LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven) that he resists another, more benevolent doctor's (Jennifer Jason Leigh) attempts to rescue him from these ghastly "treatments."