Jackie’s curious, especially about the apparently homeless veteran’s dog tags, even going so far as to ask if it would be alright if she kept them. Seeing no harm, Jack pleasantly agrees, figuring they’ll do more for the kid and her meager spirits than they can possibly do for him. Finally, without so much as a thank you mom whisks Jackie into the now running vehicle and quickly speeds away. But Jack isn’t worried. Someone will come, and until then he’ll just keep on walking.

If he knew what was coming next, it’s very likely he’d run in the opposite direction, for the ride offered him by a secretive stranger (Brad Renfro) is one he should have refused. The last thing Jack remembers is being pulled over by a state policeman and awaking to find himself on trial for a murder he’s sure he didn’t commit. The problem is that old war wound has messed up his head and now he can’t seem to recall much of what has happened in his recent past. That leads to an acquittal, but one delivered with a seal labeling him crazy, and Jack’s quickly shipped off to the local mental institution for the criminally insane.

There he comes face-to-face with Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), head of the institution and weary of trying to help those he’s sure are just trying to jilt the system. His form of therapy borders on torture, loading Jack up full of psychotropic drugs, sticking him in a straight jacket and stuffing him into a morgue locker; it’s inhuman and if the Gulf veteran isn’t already nuts than sure as heck treatments like this are going to make him that way.

But Dr. Becker’s therapy has an unintended side effect; it somehow transports Jack into the future. Suddenly it’s 2007 and he finds himself reunited with Jackie (Keira Knightley), now 23 and every bit the alcoholic chain-smoker her mother ever was. How and why this happened, Jack doesn’t know, all he does know is that it is happening, and it’s giving him the opportunity to rediscover a past – which includes his second death – he hasn’t even lived.

The Jacket is a mind-bending thriller obviously hoping to be the next Jacob’s Ladder or Angel Heart. It isn’t, not by a long shot, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In its own twisty B-movie way, the movie is actually quite entertaining. Sure it doesn’t make a lick a sense, and some of it is so clichéd it borders on the incredulous, but it’s extremely well shot and edited, the picture gliding across the screen like a surrealistic nightmare. Even better, the acting by almost everyone involved is terrific, each managing to elevate this silly Twilight Zone-wannabe to a level it wouldn’t otherwise have achieved.

Don’t get me wrong, Massy Tadjedin’s rather hackneyed screenplay has more in common with last year’s disastrous The Butterfly Effect than it does with any of the genre’s classics like Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys or Christopher Nolan’s Memento. There isn’t any wit to either the plotting or the dialogue, and events happen, not so much because they make any sort of linear sense, as if out of thin air, random acts of ultra-violence or bizarrely arbitrary kindness occurring because the only way for the plot to move forward is to have them to. It also leaves too many unanswered questions. Why is Jack stumbling around Vermont? Is there some under-the-surface reason both Jack and Jackie share a first name? Why the heck does the stranger shoot (or does he) the cop?

It also doesn’t help that the character Knightley is forced to portray is a complete and total cliché. Dressed like trailer park trash, wearing low-cut blouses, smoking like a chimney, smothered in caked black eyeliner and mascara, the actress looks like an idiot. The first time she walked on screen I wanted to laugh and the more she’s around (and the more she tries, in vain, to hide her Australian accent) the harder it is to take either her or the movie seriously. In fact, the film’s central twist hinges on the audience becoming as enamored with her as Jack does, and the fact this never happens puts The Jacket in a hole right from the word go.

Luckily, the rest of the actors make up where Knightley fails. Jennifer Jason Leigh shimmers (but then, when does she not?) as a clinician curious about Jack and unsure of Dr. Becker’s methods. There is a moment late in the film where she is about to administer an especially dangerous procedure on a young child and the mixture of stress, hope and genuine terror flashing across the actress’ face is brilliantly palpable. Kristofferson, easily one of our most underrated actors, matches her as the disillusioned and jaded Dr. Becker. You get the feeling looking at him that, at one time, he loved his job and really felt he could do some good. But over the years something inside snapped and the more the State keeps throwing him patients the more he finds their problems to be miniscule when compared to the crimes they’ve actually committed.

As good as they all are, when all is said and done this is Brody’s show. An Oscar-winner for The Pianist, I’d go out on a limb and say he’s even better here. Jack is constantly off balance, consistently forced to play on his toes, yet through it all he never losing his sense of right and wrong or his unabashedly sunny view of human potential. With all the darkness, figuratively and literally, surrounding him at every turn this is quite an accomplishment, and Brody makes it all seem perfectly natural.

If the movie ultimately fails to soar, blame the script and John Maybury’s overzealous direction. The final moments don’t have the impact they need to truly resonate and, if anything, the denouement manages to contradict many of the concepts and plot points put forth during the opening scenes. Still, The Jacket did manage to get under my skin, latching on like the cold, hard clasps binding Jack to his tragically complicated fate. It’s not much, but at least it’s something different, and sometimes different is enough.