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Imagine if Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind had been about something other than its author’s cleverness and had honestly dealt with the warping effects of time and trauma on love and you might have something like The Jacket. Adrien Brody plays Jack Starks, a soldier shot in the Gulf War who we first see hitchhiking on a cold Vermont highway sans memory. He helps an drug-addled driver and her daughter Jackie; for his troubles, he ends up victim to sensory-deprivation experiments run by ethically disabled psychiatrist Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson), during which Jack time-travels to the future, meeting and falling for the grown Jackie (Keira Knightley). Supported by Brian Eno’s gorgeous electronic score, director John Maybury (the man behind the ballsy Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil) delivers a sometimes unbearably harrowing tale of sacrifice, balanced with a muted suggestion of an unknowable spiritual agency, all while embracing the sweet romance of decency being the default human response.

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