Directed by Doug Liman
Jumper is a rather shit scifi action movie. It tells the story of David Rice, who finds out as a teenager he has the ability to teleport when he falls through thin ice and saves himself by miraculously appearing in his local library. Following this revelation, Rice runs away from home and moves to New York, supporting himself by robbing banks and spending his days traveling.
There are some holes in this film from the word go. While Rice spends his days jumping from Paris to Rome to Egypt and so on, the slick effects sequences seem stuck in neutral. Besides from the fact that nobody appears to notice Rice appearing and disappearing all the time, the special effects that were pushed so hard in the trailers for this movie are a little disappointing. They seem to function as a way to distract audiences from the holes in the narrative logic. When it comes down to it, there really isn’t much one can do with teleportation, which was done better in X-Men 2 anyway, as it essentially involves a person disappearing with little snap of sound and then reappearing.
However, the movie’s real downfall comes when Rice’s swanky lifestyle is ruined by the appearance of the Paladins a group of agents (led by Samuel L. Jackson, who played true to form and wasn’t bad, even though his hair was) who hunt and kill jumpers. The plot seems to fall down on the fact that Paladins only seem to exist because this movie needed bad guys. I felt the film didn’t give a clear reason why these people seem so intent on killing jumpers other than that they have been doing it for years.
Several subplots appear along the way including Millie, David’s girlfriend, and his missing mother, who does nothing else other than give the film a bad ending. The movie’s saving grace however was the performance of English actor Jamie Bell, who plays another jumper named Griffin. Bell gives his scenes depth and humour where Christensen, who does as best he can, fails.
Jumper had great potential, which made it an even more disappointing watch.