Archive for November 18th, 2007

The Jacket takes that hoary old SF chestnut, time travel, dispenses with the usual preoccupations of such tales – the how, the why and the potential ramifications – and instead gives us a love story.

A brain damaged Gulf War vet gets framed for murder and becomes an inmate at the Alpine Grove mental institution. Pretty soon one of the doctors is using him to test an experimental treatment that consists of doping him up, putting him in a straight jacket, and then sticking him in a morgue drawer for a few hours. Instead of feeling like he’s gone back to the womb as intended, he finds himself several years in the future. It sounds completely nuts, and as a piece of serious science fiction I suppose it is, but this isn’t a film concerned with SF conventions, it’s a film about damaged people, finding love and purpose.

Adding to the unorthodox nature of the film is Adrien Brody as the time travelling mental patient. Brody isn’t your typical leading man, he doesn’t have matinee idol looks like Brad Pitt, he looks like a regular guy and he brings that feeling to a character facing extreme experiences. He manages to keep a film about time travel via morgue drawer “real” with a performance that’s powerfully emotional yet never resort to histrionics.

Westerns don’t need to be epics or even period pieces to be classics, as this contemporary tale of a cowboy in a world that’s moved on without him shows.

When John W. “Jack” Burns (Kirk Douglas) learns that an old friend has been sent to prison for trying to help illegal Mexican immigrants he gets himself arrested in order to see him. Failing to persuade him to break jail, Burns goes on the run alone, with Sheriff Morey Johnson (Walter Matthau) leading the hunt.

David Miller’s paean to a disappearing way of life, and to the freedom that went with it, is a superior piece of filmmaking. Everyone involved is at the top of the game, both in front and behind the camera, and the resulting film is a minor classic.

Burns must rank among Douglas’ finest performances. A true free spirit, with no home or steady job, Burns goes where the mood takes him and Douglas makes this carefree wanderer real. Through his eyes we see how the world is changing, full of fences and signs, rules and regulations. It’s become a world in which men like Jack Burns are obsolete, a world that, if you don’t move with it, will run right over you.

The part of Sheriff Johnson is tailor made for Walter Matthau, his hangdog features fitting the character to a T. Johnson, one feels, not only has some admiration for his quarry but also sympathy with his plight. His job is as predictable as the dog he watches from his office window everyday, and you sense that part of him relishes the change of pace, while another regrets the inevitable outcome.