Adrien Brody won an Oscar for his authentic performance in The Pianist, so any film this compelling actor stars in comes with great anticipation. In The Jacket, Brody plays Jack Starks, a Gulf War veteran who got shot while deployed in that military action.

Nine months after nearly dying, Jack is back home in Vermont and suffering from amnesia. While hitchhiking one day, he meets a woman (Jean) and her little daughter Jackie (Keira Knightley). Jackie’s mom is whacked out on drugs, and their truck has stalled. After managing to start the vehicle, Jack receives no thanks from Jean. Moments later he’s offered a ride by a young man who gets pulled over by a cop. At this point Jack blacks out.

When he awakens, Jack finds himself on trial for murdering the cop, something he remembers nothing about. He’s found guilty and sent to Alpine Grove, an asylum for the criminally insane. He begins to undergo experimental treatments from Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson). The treatments consist of a mind-altering drug injection and being strapped into a full body jacket, then stuck on a metal tray and shoved inside a morgue drawer, sometimes for six to eight hours at a time.

While in the drawer Jack has mental flashes of both his past and his future. He eventually determines that in his future, he once again meets Jackie, a young woman now living on her own. The two become romantically involved, and Jack realizes he must now figure out how to get out of the hospital and how to stop his death, which is forecast in his mind as only four days away.

Writers are told to narrow their subject down to one genre so it can be pitched, sold, understood and shelved. Part of the problem with The Jacket is its attempt to be too many things. Director John Maybury said he found the project appealing because the story involves a mind-bending drama melding elements of a thriller, romance, murder mystery and time-travel fantasy. I say good luck fitting all of that into an appealing story in two hours. Even with Brody’s fine performance, I could seldom figure out if he was in the past, present or future and which one he would ultimately remain in and why.

Still, Brody’s ability to instill some strong traits into his character does work well. Although not really insane, Jack must live momentarily among those who are. He’s confused, but because he’s been trained to take the brunt of wrong and seek the truth, he works at discovering ways to do so in the asylum. At first, kindred spirit Dr. Lorenson (played convincingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh) doesn’t believe Jack’s tales of nightly trips to the morgue and being injected with drugs, but when he reveals things about her no one else knows, she begins to pay attention.

When challenged by Dr. Lorenson about his methods, Dr. Becker replies, “You can’t break something that is already broken” -- which conveys his exact attitude about the patients in Alpine Grove. Kristofferson, portraying a heartless doctor who could be this generation’s Dr. Frankenstein, sets the right tone for his depraved character. Unfortunately, the film never explains Becker’s motivation. How did he get this way?

Other actors in the film keep the story moving along effectively -- Daniel Craig as another patient; Kelly Lynch as Jackie’s mother Jean, and Brad Renfro as the stranger. Nevertheless, this story tries to be too many things at once, with its various elements getting in the way of each other. Focusing a tale around any one, maybe two of these genres might have worked, but The Jacket offers too many escape mechanisms that muddle the story.

Finally, the scene in which patients go a little bit nuts during one session is a blatant rip-off of a similar event in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Sadly, it never comes close to the quality of that classic scene.

I think Brody’s fans will enjoy his work in this film – but unless you’re an avid puzzle solver, The Jacket may not be a good fit for you.

(Released by Warner Independent Pictures and rated “R” for violence, language and brief sexuality/nudity.)

Read Diana’s reviews of classic films at http://classicfilm.about.com.