“I was 27 years old the first time I died,” says Jack Starks (Adrien Brody), who is shot within the first five minutes of the time-thriller “The Jacket.”

In the beginning of the film, Jack is a soldier in Desert Storm who survives a near-fatal wound and is promptly discharged a few months later. As he walks down a snowy Vermont road, his destination nowhere, he bumps into a drunken mother, Jean (Kelly Lynch) and her young daughter, Jackie, with a broke-down truck. He fixes their truck but is yelled at and reprimanded by Jean.

He continues down the road and hitches a ride with a psycho who murders a cop and leaves the blame on Jack. After a trial, Jack is shipped off to the nuthouse, considered criminally insane thanks to the wound he received from serving.

Keep in mind, it’s Christmas 1992.

In the hospital, Jack’s doctors, Thomas Becker (Kris Kristofferson) and Dr. Lorenson (Jennifer Jason Leigh) put him through an unorthodox treatment of a shot of drugs followed by being thrown into a straightjacket and rolled into a morgue cabinet.

It just gets weirder. In “the jacket,” as Jack dubs it, he has visions of 15 years into the future. There, he meets up with an older Jackie (Keira Knightley) and finds out he died on January 1, 1993.

With Jackie’s help, he pieces together his impending death in the hospital and struggles to prove he doesn’t belong there. The last days and future days of Jack’s life show Jack grappling with the concepts of how the choices we make affect ourselves and others.

The plot sounds like a convoluted trip through space and time, but – call me crazy – it makes sense. Brody’s ability to creep out an audience (“The Village”) and charm them (“The Pianist”) at the same time comes in handy.

Knightley has matured since “Bend It Like Beckham” and while she may overreach with Jackie’s unusual behavior and mannerisms, (her dead stares when she reunites with Jack can be annoying) she shines as an actress otherwise.

Kristofferson and Leigh do just as well as the doctors with a big similarity to Nurse Ratched. Leigh is a bit clunky when she tries to show sympathy, but Kristofferson does well as the pill-popping doctor dealing with his own demons.

The movie achieves a balance between what is comfortable and what is disturbing: When Jack helps Jackie and Jean with their truck, Jean’s groaning and vomiting on the road provokes a feeling of sickness on purpose.

“The Jacket” may seem like a horror movie at first, but it’s part romance, part thriller, part mystery and a bit of sci-fi.

If you learn anything from the film, it’s that reality is just a perspective.