Rating: 
Summary: Dropping The Bags
Review: After a many viewings of this unusual work, there are still subtleties to be found. Unrelenting metaphor that is transparent until review of where it has taken the viewer. Shocking in parts, confusing and disturbing, there are at least three levels to be understood; all with difficulty, but thought provoking to say the least. Could not help but buy a copy finally to make sure it was within reach as memory of it prevailed.
Rating:
Summary: Disturbing theory of what went on in Vietnam
Review: Very effective in putting you in a dream state. You never know what is going on. Jacob's Ladder makes you feel like the main character, like you there with him, feeling as alone in the whole world as he does.From time to time, there is hope that the loneliness doesn't exist, but then it gets stronger than the last time. Awesome cinematography, and well played.
Rating:
Summary: Great Film
Review: I saw this film on VHS several years ago, and was blown away by the story and cinematography. One of the best films I've seen. Of course, the ending is what catches everyone off guard. I just purchased the DVD and it looks 10X better with widescreen and a documentary. You've gotta see this film... and the DVD is a must for your collection.
Rating:
Summary: bent spokes and rusty horn's
Review: I have to admit it, I am a sucker for a psychological film. I came into the movie not expecting much, and left the movie with my mind buzzing with possibilities. Jacob's ladder is a movie that deals with realities, demons, ghost's, hallucinations, and monsters. There are uses of these demon's that took me by surprise, because as apposed to normal shock-like scares this is more dream-like. When a movie begins dealing with the imagination, it can do whatever it wants, but good for us the director stayed grounded and kept everything possible. It could all be interpreted in one way or another. It is presented in a jumble of idea's of what could be this character's reality, then doubles back and it's not real at all. The ending took me by surprise, as I knew it was going to be a shocker because the movie was leading to one. I couldn't guess the ending, though it was staring me in the face the entire time. When your through, you may have a new appreciation of veterans. You may feel a loss for explanation. If your not the figure-it-out or think-about-it-later type, you may hate it. Not this reviewer, because a day later I am still digging around through the story and piecing it back together. Even a bare bones horror fan should like Jacobs Ladder.
It deals with the mind, and it deals with a heaven and hell that could be experienceed. It's about finding peace and resolution with our own personal guilts. And finally, its a movie in search of an audience. Join.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: I really would not have expected such a brilliant psychological horror form Adrian Lyne, being more accustomed to his films like "Flashdance", or "9 1/2 Weeks". Tim Robbins brings forth a very powerful character, even surpassing his brilliant performance in "The Shawshank Redemption". The film has a very good, if somewhat suffocating, pace, but the amount of horror and the amount of relief is expertly balanced.
Besides, the film manages to be very disturbing with the use of very little special effects other than make-up and a couple of camera tricks. This, coupled with a very good story, creates a unique atmosphere of horror that is absurdly surreal and painfully realistic at the same time. To put it frankly, I can easily call this the best horror film I have ever watched.
Rating: 
Summary: Reviewer gives plot away
Review: A warning to those who actually like to watch the movie BEFORE they know the ending, the review here titled "MENTAL HEALTH" written by "A viewer from a Sick World"gives away the movie surprise ending. Watch the movie. Avoid spoiler reviewers.
Rating: 
Summary: "A DISGRACE TO AMERICAN VIETNAM HERO'S!"
Review: It would not let me rate this 0 stars. But I give it a big fat ZERO! This CHEAP SHOT govermental DRUG induced, rifle bayoneted by our OWN soldiers tale! While never leaving the field hospital Jacob is having morbid racing thought's as he fights for his last few minutes of life. Read books on OCD. Dont say I didnt warn you! Kevin
Rating:
Summary: Wages of war, from a different perspective.
Review: Amazing film. It is nothing like it looks on the surface. The scarely images and nightmares are not the real horror. Rather, it is about a horror of war. ( I am neither pro or anti war. I try to have an academic view of war and peace in general ) This is the best movie about Vietnam, in my humble opinion. First time, I was so surprised at that ending I had to see it again soon. It really got to my head. I strongly urged my husband to join this time. He somewhat guessed, but was totally blown away. Everything became clear at second viewing as if entire background came in front. The ending is profoundly sad. My favorite scene is Jacob finally lifting his head slowly on the sofa in the morning sun. When I think of what went through his head all night ........ ( sob ) It is also a strangely calm moment. This film is truly spiritual and enlightening. I watched Jacob as he went through his painful journey for two hours. This is only a story of one soldier's life, out of tens of thousands. Yet it dwells on my heart heavily with devine light reflecting on it.
Rating:
Summary: Climbing the Ladder
Review: I won't go into the level of spoiler that virtually every other reviewer seems compelled to use; this is a film that needs to be experienced with as little foreknowledge of its "meaning" or its final revelation as possible. I remember being Very Angry with Newsweek's reviewer when he mentioned the title of a classic story in his review, with the result of completely telegraphing the end of the film to anyone who recognised the title mentioned. As a non-combat Viet Nam veteran, myself, i can attest that the film makers catch the mood and feelings of a sizeable percentage of Nam vets pretty well. The overall mood of building confusion, dread and paranoia, as Jacob Singer's life becomes more and more strange and menacing, is well handled -- is Jacob suffering from some sort of bizarre post-traumatic stress disorder, or is it something more? A few hints: Think carefully about all references to or appearances in the storyline of Jacob's dead son. Listen to what the characters say. Don't take the Nam sequences as necessarily absolute truth. Among thr DVD extras are various cut scenes; i'm glad that they were cut, as thry seem to tend to both cater to the "gross out horror" element and to literalise certain aspects of the film that i'm just as happy to have left at least partly obscure and metaphorical. In fact, there are a few places where i might cut a bit more, if only for pace -- the gurney sequence, after Jacob is ordered taken to X-Ray from the Emergency Room, is too long and somewhat repetitive; i would guess it could be shortend by a third or more without negatively affecting the story and with amarked improvement of the rather glacially-slow pacing of that part of the film. Tim Robbins gives Jacob an appropriately befuddled face, and Danny Aiello is his usual more-than-competent self as an oracular-sounding chiropracter. Not necessariy a film for those who like everything neatly explained and all the back story available before the end, this is still a thought-provoking and disturbing little exercise in the dark side.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific movie, director and star with a powerful story
Review: Jacob's Ladder is a tough film if you want a simple ending, if you want it to be contrite and plausible. This movie is anything but. Danny Aiello as your chiropractor trying to explain life and death and existence is enough to both laugh at and find hilarious.
The whole movie flirts and eventually decides on the premise that we all make decisions, even teh relaly big ones about life and death and whether or not to accept it. (Similar to the Tananarive Due book The Between). However this movie asks you to take a simple precept: that your whole life flashes before yoru eyes when you die and accept it. But at the same time it also forces you to understand that your whole life includes the possibilities that it could've been had you not died. See that's where it all gets freaky and the remote control is tossed over your shoulder and you shake your head.
But think on it.
What of the millions of dead just within the last century, what would've become of them had they lived. How many Beethovens or Baldwins or Hawkings would've been birthed by the dead? Okay, suppose even further that you got to see/project onto this screen of possibility and that's where Jacob's Ladder picks up from.
Except it takes a normal man and allows him (the real question is whether it's his mind and his body or only his mind) to slip though the cracks in death, to reject the dissolution of form to body and instead ressurrect himself in form and thought. See, now you're tossing the movie box cover because there is an allusion to Jesus Christ and Dante's Inferno and the concept that our last fear is death but not of dying, the physical thought of death but accepting that life is over. We can imagine an injury in war, as happens here but we can't accept the thought that the show's over on this plane of existence, no matter who comes to try and get you to accept it----your dead child, a chiropractor/angel, demons. Because teh movie kind of alludes to the concept that we leave breadcrumbs, spritiual ones throughout our life and good and evil track us by them. The more powerful you conceive of, or perhaps actualize yourself as the greater possibility that your demons are gonna come for you.
The movie is not so much of an enigma as three questions lined up. If you give it over to the first then you have to take the next leaps.
Question 1: What if "death" through some kind of medical experimentation/cosmic fluke became a choice?
Question 2: Who would be "sent" to get you to accept death?
Question 3: What would you have created in life during the time that you were to be dead?
You can also say that there's the question of who's imagining what here as the character's perceptions of reality overlap to the point of this movie needing a second viewing. But each time you watch it ask your a different question. What if he's dead? What if the experimentation saved his life? What if this is his thought projection about the last bits of his life, its possibilities?
A super film.
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