Story Overview

The Jacket follows Jack Starks (Adrien Brody), a Gulf War veteran who served as a captain in the United States Navy. Although he survives a near-fatal gunshot wound during the war, Jack returns home suffering from severe memory loss caused by psychological trauma. With no family and nowhere else to go after his discharge, he decides to return to his hometown in Vermont.

Nine months later, while hitchhiking along snow-covered roads toward Vermont, Jack encounters a broken-down pickup truck carrying a woman named Jean (Kelly Lynch) and her young daughter Jackie (Keira Knightley). Despite Jean being too intoxicated to speak, Jack helps restart the vehicle and continues on his journey. Soon after, he accepts a ride from a young man heading toward the Canadian border. When the car is stopped by the police, Jack suddenly blacks out. He wakes up in a small-town courtroom, accused of murder with no memory of the crime.

Declared mentally unfit to stand trial, Jack is committed to Alpine Grove State Hospital. There, Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) subjects him to disturbing experimental treatments, injecting him with untested drugs, restraining him in a straitjacket, and locking him inside a morgue drawer for hours at a time. Trapped in darkness, Jack experiences intense hallucinations and fragmented memories of both the war and the night of the murder, desperately trying to piece together the truth.

During one of these episodes, Jack finds himself suddenly back in Vermont, where he meets a grown-up Jackie, now working as a waitress. On New Year’s Eve, with all shelters full, she offers him a place to sleep on her couch. As Jack drifts between past, present, and future, he begins to sense that his survival—and the possibility of altering his fate—rests in Jackie’s hands.