Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie Darko.
Donnie Darko is the title character of the Donnie Darko film, of 2001. It was incarnated by Jake Gyllenhaal.
Character
| Spoiler Warning: The following contains important plot details of the entire film. |
Donnie Darko is a youngster in Middlesex, Virginia, who has been under psychological attention and medication. He lives with his parents and two sisters, to whom all he is actually caring nonetheless. Donnie also attends a private school, where he belongs to a group of friends.
On October 2, 1988, in the middle of the night Donnie finds in his mind a strange individual, Frank, who is wearing a rabbit costume and a strange mask, foretelling an imminent final event for about a month later.
Donnie sleepwalks, following the rabbit man and so he spends the night sleeping at a nearby golf course. In the morning, he finds that such trip had saved his life, as a falling plane-engine had crushed his own bedroom.
During the ensuing days, the imaginary Frank keeps guiding Donnie Darko, for a series of apparently unrelated accomplishments; so Donnie floods his school, burns the house of an annoying motivational speaker, and particularly he gets infatuated with a girl, Gretchen.
Also, Donnie Darko begins seeing uncanny effects over the real world, some kind of temporal vectors which anticipate the immediate future actions of each person. As Donnie discovers then, the destiny of everything in this world would be following some master plan, and he would be being manipulated by some time-traveling forces.
Studying the case with the help of his teacher of Physics, Donnie realizes that he has been living within some sort of God's channel, actually witnessing future events of real life unlike anybody else, so being able to anticipate and modify the future events of the real world at will.
Donnie Darko finally meets his destiny, when his girlfriend is slain by a car, who is driven by a man, whose name is Frank and who is disguised as a rabbit, just like in Donnie's nightmares. Donnie revenges her death, killing the man with a pistol -as it had been foretold too, in one of his dreams-.
Avoiding the police, Donnie Darko then realizes, that soon everything will be over. An unnatural cloud forms over his home, twisting the time and space of the reality. The engine of another plane then falls over it, and again it's the original October 2 day; Donnie finds himself lying again on his own bed. He had traveled back in time to that moment.
However, Donnie Darko then decides to remain on his bedroom, for perishing this time in the crash, and so saving all the people who he loved and whose lives had been so affected by his messianic actions during the last days.