The Jacket

Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran, returns to Vermont in 1992 after a near-fatal head wound but struggles with amnesia. While walking along a highway, he meets Jackie and her alcoholic mother, gives Jackie his dog tags, and helps start a broken-down truck before moving on.

A man gives him a ride and they are pulled over by a policeman. Starks later wakes to find himself near a dead officer, with the murder weapon nearby and a slug in his body. He claims someone else was at the scene, but his amnesia makes him unreliable, and he is found not guilty by reason of insanity and confined to a mental institution.

Starks is placed under the care of Dr. Thomas Becker and his staff at a psychiatric facility. He endures the regimented, dehumanizing routine of the institution as he battles memory loss and the fragility of his identity. The hospital becomes the arena where his fate and sanity are tested.

Becker subjects Jack to an experimental protocol without proper consent: drugs are injected, he is bound in a straitjacket, and placed inside a morgue drawer as sensory deprivation. The isolation pushes Jack toward a new awareness of time and self. The procedure is dangerous and ethically dubious.

While in sensory deprivation, Jack experiences a leap through time and travels 15 years forward. He arrives in 2007 and encounters an older Jackie at a roadside diner who does not recognize him at first. She offers shelter, setting up the possibility of using time travel to alter his fate.

In the future, Jack searches a bedroom and finds his dog tags among Jackie's belongings. Jackie is frightened when he asserts he is Jack Starks and tells him that he died on New Year’s Day, 1993. She orders him to leave, ending their fragile alliance for the moment.

Starks is transported back through time repeatedly as part of the treatment and his attempts to change events. Doctors and sympathetic staff observe these jumps and sometimes facilitate them, blurring the lines between years and identities. The time-travel episodes become central to the plan to save Jack.

On January 1, 1993, Dr. Beth Lorenson escorts Jack to Jackie’s childhood home and delivers a letter for Jackie's mother. The letter warns of Jackie’s bleak future and predicts she will be orphaned if her mother smokes. This act links Jack’s fate to the present and triggers a crucial turning point.

Returning to the hospital, Jack experiences a vivid flashback to his Iraq head wound and collapses, bleeding. He convinces two sympathetic doctors to place him back into the jacket for one last time. This move sets up the climactic attempt to alter the timeline.

Jack returns to 2007 and discovers that Jackie’s life has improved thanks to the letter. She is no longer a waitress but a nurse with a brighter outlook. The altered timeline suggests that Jack’s efforts to save her have had a lasting impact.

The 2007 meeting unfolds on a snow-covered road as Jackie initially drives past, then stops when she notices Jack’s head wound. She agrees to take him to the hospital where she works, signaling a hopeful turn in their story. A call from Jackie's mother during the drive confirms she is alive.

They continue the journey as the screen fades to white and the song We Have All the Time in the World plays over the credits. The time-travel odyssey has altered outcomes and leaves a sense that time itself can bend for love and hope.