by MATTHEW HAYS, MARK SLUTSKY and SARAH ROWLAND

The Jacket

Adrien Brody is a beleaguered man on the run again, though this time he's not running from the Nazis. Also again, he looks like someone who is on some kind of starvation diet. In John Maybury's The Jacket, Brody is a troubled Gulf War veteran, someone left traumatized by his service. After a freakish incident, Brody is convicted of a crime he didn't commit, assigned to a loony bin, and subsequently subjected to cruel and unusual "treatments" that are more like torture (from a haggard Dr. Kris Kristofferson, no less).

Maybury, who deftly directed the Francis Bacon biopic Love Is the Devil, does his best here to inject the proceedings with plenty of angsty style. In particular, when Brody is strapped into the titular jacket, Maybury effectively makes us feel his nightmarish claustrophobia.

But ultimately, The Jacket doesn't really pay off like it should. In Slaughterhouse-Five style, the jacket magically allows Brody to leap forward and backward in time, seeing possible violent ends to his life. He alternately seeks justice, tries to change the future and then, apparently, returns as a ghost. While there are a certain number of thrills along the way, The Jacket soon begins to feel more cumbersome and tiresome than scary and edgy. The best part comes with the performances delivered by the supporting character actors, especially Jennifer Jason Leigh. After this film, The Machinist and Palindromes, one has to wonder: is Leigh committed to only making flat-out freakshow movies? (MH)

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

In 1997 chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, described by some as the greatest ever player of the game, was defeated in a six-game match by IBM's computer Deep Blue. Vikram Jayanti's documentary revisits the controversial face-off, and reveals the interesting story behind it, of how Kasparov - thinking he was taking part in a friendly experiment - was blindsided by IBM's ruthlessly competitive attitude toward the showdown. Both sides left the match noticeably bitter, Kasparov all but accusing the other team of cheating, and IBM dismantling Deep Blue and discontinuing its chess initiative (though the company's stock was certainly enriched by all the publicity). There's no real evidence that IBM engaged in any foul play, but they certainly took advantage of Kasparov's naïveté.

As a story, it's pretty fascinating, and Kasparov alone, even without the Deep Blue incident, would have made a great documentary subject. The brilliant young player basically blew all of his older, established competitors out of the water when he first began to compete in his teens. But Game Over shoots itself in the foot, with a way-overemphasized "thrillerish" visual style and overbearingly ominous soundtrack. Spooky close-ups, eerie fade-in/fade-outs, and an unpleasantly grainy video look actually make the movie a lot harder to watch than it should be; you have to struggle to get through to the interesting stuff. Which is a shame. A movie with a premise this good shouldn't be constantly directing attention back to itself and its stylistic shortcomings. (MS)

Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? - The Final Cut

What started out as a Dee Dee Ramone interview for 1999's Born to Lose - a grim account of the life and long drawn out death of Johnny Thunders - has spun off into a completed rock doc of its own. The work-in-progress screened a couple of years ago at Cinéma du Parc; however, the final cut of Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? boasts tighter editing, over-all better print quality and, of course, an altered ending.

Most of the stripped down monologue consists of a topless Dee Dee baring his soul and his scabrous white chest, which starkly contrasts against the black backdrop. The legendary bassist happily yammers on about some of the mythology surrounding the Ramones, including the origins of "Chinese Rocks," an ode to smack - penned by Dee Dee, but made famous by the Heartbreakers. He also gives a guided tour of his many scars and tattoos, each one with a psycho-chick story behind it.

Wisely, director Lech Kowalski doesn't clutter this one-man show with any extraneous footage. In fact, only once does he cut away to Dee Dee's quiet home life, where the recovering addict ribs his kitty about having to kick catnip cold turkey. Hardcore fans probably won't learn any new punk rock trivia here. But watching Dee Dee, who ODed in 2002, deliver what seems likes a pre-taped eulogy makes for some powerful viewing. (SR)

The Jacket, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine and Hey! Is Dee Dee Home? - The Final Cut open Friday, Mar. 4

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