I remember seeing the trailer for this film and was interested, but then it didn’t do that well and I stayed away, and after seeing that I can see that was a mistake. This film is an incredibly clever and well done psychological thriller. Sure I made some calls way too early, but it was still such a well done idea that I was there all the way and highly recommend this film.

REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS…

Adrien Brody is Jack Starks a Gulf War vet who took a bullet in the head from a small child and was dead, but a mortician in Iraq realized he was still alive and he was brought back though with some mental problems. In 1992 having returned to the US after extensive therapy he is walking along a snow covered street and comes across a young girl Jackie (Laura Marano) and her drunken mother Jean (Kelly Lynch) and their broken down pickup. The mom is passed out or throwing up, and Jack gets the truck started, and gives the little girl his dog tags. When Jean awakens she freaks out at Jack, who just continues walking as they drive off and he is picked up by car who gets pulled over by a cop, and the guy is edgy. Something happens and the next thing Jack knows he is being tried for murdering the cop, though he has no memory of doing that, and the police can’t find Jackie or Jean to corroborate his story. Jack is assumed to have Gulf War syndrome and is sent to a hospital for the criminally insane. There is one kind doctor Beth Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and one cruel doctor Dr. Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson) who is doing a cruel experimental treatment and he has picked Jack for his next patient. Jack is taken and put in a full body straight jacket and heavily drugged and put into a locker for dead bodies, where he trips out, and then something strange happens.

Jack is no longer in the cell and is fact on the side of a road and a beautiful woman played by Keira Knightley picks him up in her old SUV and takes him home because it is Christmas Eve. She is pretty out of it, much like Jean was in the beginning, and won’t tell him her name, and he searches around and finds his dog tags and realizes that this is in fact Jean Price, but grown up and it is 1997. She kicks him out, and he wakes up again as he is taken out of the locker.

At first Jack doesn’t want more treatment, but then he wants nothing but more and he goes back to Jean and they fall for each other, as they try to figure out what is going on, as Jack died on New Years in 1992, so how can he be there, and they begin to search out his past, talking to Dr. Beth Lorenson. Then in the past Jack talks to her and even ends up helping her with a patient who is a friend of her son, who is in fact having seizures, and she needs to give him minor electroshock therapy to cure it. Jack slowly convinces her as well as making Jean fall for him, and in the present he also finds Dr. Becker and gets info to tell him on his last trip, about all the patients he ‘treated’ who all died, and will haunt him. Jack gets Dr. Lorenson to help him and he gets her to help him visit Jackie and Jean, knowing from the future that Jean will die by falling asleep smoking and Jackie will be alone and much like her mother was, he gives her a letter to change her future, and goes back with Dr. Lorenson, falling on the ice and causing head trama, just like he was supposed to have died. He tells her to put him in the jacket and with the help of one of Dr. Becker’s assistants they do it, and Jack wakes up back in the future. He sees Jackie leave from the diner from the beginning, but she is not a waitress, and instead of an SUV she gets in a VW Beetle. Again she drives by him, but pulls back, seeing the blood and offers to drive him to the hospital, as she is a nurse and on her way. On the way she gets a call from her quite alive mom, and Jack couldn’t be happier and drives off with her into the sun.

A very well done and enjoyable movie with a good concept and even the happy ending works here, as we don’t know that they get together again, though it is certainly hinted at. Not scary but very, very well done and I do recommend you check this out.