A recent New York Times article acted as a requiem of sorts for Section 8, the ailing production company started by Steven Sodebergh and George Clooney. Their endeavor, intended to bring to the screen low budget, auteur driven films too small or too risky to otherwise register on the Hollywood radar, was exciting, refreshing and downright honorable; it embodied a respect for the art form of cinema over capitalism. Adhering to this ratio all the way to the end, they've produced many great films that have scarcely made a cent at the box office, and now Clooney has been quoted as saying that next year, when he and Soderbergh's production deal is up for renewal, they may just let it lapse.

Regardless of whether or not one is a fan of Section 8's output, it cannot be denied that the company's demise is, on a more general scale, very unfortunate news. And yet I wonder if it could have been preventable? If their modus operandi was to produce smaller, creative films that would qualify their risky content with relatively risk-free budgets, then why are they producing films like The Jacket - or, to be more precise, producing them on a scale that does not befit the film?

The Jacket is an example of a tiny film with a prematurely inflated ego. Although it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, it is being marketed as a mainstream thriller, and features chief amongst its cast two names of relative marquee value: Adrian Brody and Kiera Knightley. And certainly, it was not cheap; the Internet Movie Database lists its budget at 19 million, and one can guess that the marketing will add a sufficient amount to that figure.

And, I predict, the film will not be a great success. There is no extremity to the plot to wow audiences, and its emotional core is too narrow to be satisfying to an undiscerning crowd; in short, it is film that should have been a smaller effort, one without the overt trappings of a Hollywood thriller; one that would not be such a financial risk; one that would not necessarily be another nail in Section 8's coffin.

Some people involved with the film seem to have understood this; Brody, certainly, does nice work, and so does his director, John Maybury, whose last effort was the rather beautiful and rather obscure Love Is The Devil: A Study For A Portrait Of Francis Bacon. Maybury makes certain choices, such as having a piano sonata playing during opening scenes of Desert Storm warfare, that suggest he is fully aware that the heart of the movie is smaller, simpler and more character driven than the conceit of its surrounding plot. He also creates interesting visual motifs that signify his origins as an art film director. In Love Is The Devil, he got around not having the rights to any of Francis Bacon's artwork by turning the style of the film itself into a reflection of those famous paintings, and he uses some of the same experimental visual techniques here, to good effect (a repeated motif of blood flooding over an eyeball comes to mind).

But the script gets in the way of his good intentions. Screenwriter Mass Tadjedin tries to fill the shoes of thrillers like Jacob's Ladder and Twelve Monkeys, but what this film is actually far closer to is Donnie Darko. Just as that film was about a young man who journeyed forward in time to learn that his death was necessary to prevent the end of the world, the plot of The Jacket is about a man whose dying moments are prolonged indefinitely, giving him the chance to enact two random acts of kindness - to serve as a sort of guardian angel - before expiring. And that is all is is about. All of the other elements in the film - the titular jacket, the Gulf War, the insane asylum, the innocent-man-accused-of-murder element - these are all grandiose means to a very minor end; the film begins with a war and ends with a mother hugging her daughter, and the connection between the two barely qualifies as tenuous.

On the other hand, the complete lack of irony, or of a Shyamalan-styled twist, is refreshing, and the time travel concept is intriguing (it isn't so much a case of travelling as of being, as Kurt Vonnegut put it in Slaughterhouse Five, unstuck in time). As mentioned, Brody delivers a fine performance, and Knightley, affecting a smoky American accent, has some strong moments in a mostly expositional role (she's too pretty to be a convincing alcoholic, but otherwise she's quite credible, and isn't afraid of unflattering nudity). Even better, in terms of both charcter and performance, is Jennifer Jason Leigh, as a doctor in the asylum Brody finds himself committed to. Her subplot is probably the most irrelevant to the plot, and contains the biggest loophole in the script, but it's also one of the more intriguing developments in the film. Worth mentioning too is the superb Daniel Craig, who first came to my attention, along with Maybury, in Love Is The Devil, and who can add this role as an inmate to his list of exceptional performances over the past twelve months. Like so much else in the film, his role can barely be considered incidental, and yet it's accomplished enough to be compelling.

All of these elements - the direction, the performances, the core of the script - are of high quality, but they cannot justify The Jacket as a whole. Because it ultimately can't exceed the thriller genre its been shoehorned into, it doesn't work as character-based science fiction; but because that's exactly what it needs to be and too many people involved with the project were aware of that, it doesn't work as a thriller either. It is not a satisfying film on either count. There's a great deal of intelligence at work behind this film, so why is it not more successful?

I think it has something to with money, which brings me back to my original question: why was this film produced on this scale? Had the budget been smaller, perhaps there would have been more freedom for the filmmakers to explore the concept, to cut down on contrivance, to make a film as good as - well, maybe as good as Donnie Darko, which cost a fraction of what The Jacket did, was exponentially better, and which will be remembered long after this one has faded from the megaplexes. And were it to fail anyway, the monetary loss would still be considerably less.

Unfortunately, according to the logic of today's Hollywood, a million dollar film is a far greater risk than a twenty million dollar film; perhaps, operating under the studio fold, Section 8 couldn't help but subscribe to this template. Back in the 70s, a filmmaker like Robert Altman could appeal to the studios for a million dollars to make a film like, say, Three Women, and he'd get it; and now, decades later we're still enjoying the results on our Criterion Collection DVDs. Apparently, that's an impossibility today, and so we get films like The Jacket, which exist in the same state of negative fluctuation that Section 8 seems to be in: they're independently minded, but too tethered to convention to really make a lasting impression.