Jumper (2008)

Full of possibilities, but misses all of them!

Time-traveling, teleporting. I've been always kind of a sucker for these sci-fi premises. What would you do if you could teleport yourself to basically any place on the face of the earth? Steven Gould, in his novel Jumper, uses this premise and gives his characters the innate ability to instantly teleport themselves. It is definitely an interesting foundation, however, Director Doug Liman and screenwriters David S. Goyer, Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg do little to exploit this promising idea, and come up with a movie that takes us through NYC, Rome, Egypt, Tokyo, but ends up going absolutely nowhere.

Hayden Christensen is David Rice, a normal teenager until he finds he's got the ability to teleport himself from place to place when he first "jumps" spontaneously in order to escape his abusive father (Michael Rooker). Having run away, he learns to control his ability and then does, I guess, what every one of us, being a teleporting teenager, would do: go into a bank's vault and get away with several thousands in cash. The good thing is that Jumpers do not have to worry about mingling their own molecules with a fly's, as they can actually hold onto anything: other people, cars, even parts of a building, and teleport to another place arriving safe and sound on the other side with whoever or whatever they were carrying.

David grows up and, by that time, he's already got a penthouse at a luxurious NY building and he's been all over the world. The usual day for him involves having breakfast on top of the Giza's Sphinx in Egypt, spending the afternoon surfing the best waves of the season in Hawaii or Fiji, and having a drink at a popular pub in London while checking out and hitting on the hot babes at night.

Yes, life is good for David, that is, until the bad guys appear. He learns that he is not the only one with that unusual gift and also learns that there is actually a group of people that hunt Jumpers for a living. Roland, played by Samuel L. Jackson, has been following David since he first broke in at his first bank. He is the leader of the Paladins, that particular group of individuals whose only goal in life seems to be killing all the Jumpers and, apparently, this war between Jumpers and Paladins has been going on for hundreds if not thousands of years.

But David doesn't look like he is the type of guy that'd enjoy messing up with other people's lives. Granted, he steals money, but then he is basically a good guy that likes to pamper himself and enjoy a low-profile, big-shot-like life and spend big amounts of money. I'd bet the IRS would nail him before The Paladins would. Ok yes, I guess with time David could get bored of all the indulgences and turn to the bad side; maybe teleport himself right into the Pentagon secret archives and steal some sensitive material and then try to sell it or just give it away to a terrorist organization. I haven't read the book, but I understand that, in the original Gould's novel, there is no Paladin organization and the villains (or at least the guys chasing David), are actually NSA agents who are trying to understand these powers and get them to "good" use. I think Roland says that he works for the NSA, which initially made sense to me, but then, this character turns out to be just an obsessed, fanatical hunter. This is where the movie starts going nowhere. We spend the rest of the time watching Roland following and fighting David, while he drags with him his love interest, Millie (Rachel Blison), around the world. Throw in the appearance of Griffin (Jamie Bell), another paranoid Jumper, and the brief and inexplicable appearance of David's mother (Diane Lane), who's a Paladin herself (!?), and we end up with this 88 minute mess.

There are so many inconsistencies in this movie that it is hard to follow. For instance, I really never bought or understood Roland. What's his motivation? Nobody knows. The movie doesn't stop to elaborate on this issue. Maybe he's jealous because he can't teleport himself, but, in any case, he seems to be pretty much settled as he can travel all over the world and it is obvious that he doesn't depend on commercial airlines schedules.

Roland utters at some point something like: "God is the only one that should have those powers!", and if you consider that the name Paladins has been associated with the highest officials of the Catholic Church, the religious connotation is inevitable. I assume that most religious people don't question what their religion says, they just comply. Liman and company are like that, they don't care. They don't give the Paladins a cause, they just let them hate the Jumpers so much, and then they give us Roland, an overzealous, inquisitorial-like priest whose religion states that its worst deadly sin is teleporting.

Roland is blind for mysterious reasons, but I'm not. If David's mother is a Paladin and she won't kill her own son, why not convince her to enlist David as a Paladin? Paladins can not "jump", so it might be helpful for them to have an actual jumper in the ranks. Why not convince David to partner with him and do something good for the entire human race, or just themselves? Can you imagine the possibilities? This is what saves this movie from the worst rating. I've spent myself quite some time thinking about these, and when movies make me think, I like them. Forget about having David teleporting medical supplies to a disaster stricken, inaccessible region, or having David rescue a bunch of people from the top of a burning building. How about being the world's most feared paparazzo? Jump into a celebrity's home, catch him or her off guard, and get away with some photos that could be sold to the tabloids for millions, or how about just establishing the world's fastest and most effective courier service? Anyway, if I ever come across a Jumper, watch out FedEx!
October 2, 2008

Who wrote this?

What a great idea for a film but the story did not just fall through it fell all the way to China. Watching this movie made you want to go see the dentist as that would be a better story with a good ending.

If you have two hours to kill watch the Muppets in Space, it was better Sci-fi then this. September 29, 2008

wanted more

this is not a bad movie and its not a great movie. i tried to like this movie more than i actually did. the main character was so forgetable that i really did not care about what happens to him. the acting was really weak except for jamie bell who held the movie together. it was really short and had all the potential in the world but it missed the mark September 27, 2008

Great Movie!!

If you like science fiction and adventure, this is a must get movie. I love movies in that genre so i basically had to go see it...and i wasnt disappointed. I really liked the movie and had few ways to think of how they could have made it better. This movie will definetly have you amazed and thinking..."damn, i wonder if they will ever have the ability to really do this??" A must have blu-ray to add to your collection! September 25, 2008

Great idea squandered

What if an average guy from Ann Arbor, Michigan discovers at age 15 that he has the ability to travel instantaneously to other locations? How would he handle that ability? Those questions are answered in "Jumper," directed by Doug Liman.
"Jumper" is based on an intriguing premise: a person has the ability to teleport himself at will to anywhere in the world, whether it be just a few feet away in his apartment or thousands of miles across the globe. Sounds like a quality belonging to a spandex-clad superhero more than an average Joe. After all, Superman essentially has that ability because of his super-speed, and Superman dates back to 1938.
David Rice (Hayden Christensen) realizes he has this "jumping" ability when he almost drowns. In a split second, he finds himself in the midst of bookshelves in the Ann Arbor Public Library along with enough water to destroy a third of the library's book collection.
With a cartoonishly mean father (Michael Rooker) and more than his share of teen angst, David decides to make for the big city, his teleportation talent the road to a whole new life. But this invisible zipping from space to place doesn't come easily, as David practices teleportation in Central Park, slamming into trees while learning to fine tune his ability.
The beginning of "Jumper" is very intriguing, and the film promises an enjoyable ride. But so much goes wrong along the way, the movie crumbles before our eyes. Let's take the character of David. Though he's not a traditional superhero, we've become conditioned to expect that a lad lucky enough to have unusual strengths will use them for good. What does David do? He breaks into bank vaults, steals huge sums of money, sets himself up in luxury apartments all over the world, picnics atop the Sphinx, surfboards in Fiji, hangs out, literally, from Big Ben in London, and picks up girls all over the world. He's not exactly bettering mankind or combating evil.
The element of conflict that drives the film comes in the character of Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), a Paladin. The Paladins are Jumper hunters. Why? Roland makes a brief comment that only God should have the right to be omnipresent. Huh? Is that it? Yep. For half the movie, David jumps from place to place to stay ahead of the Paladins, who want to capture him because of pseudo-religious self-righteousness.
Christensen is a likable actor and he succeeds in making us care about his David, even though the character is a shallow, pretty-boy hedonist. I suppose the good will he engendered as young Anakin Skywalker has spilled over to this less interesting character.
Jackson mails in this performance. His appearance with
snow-white hair is a lot of fun, though his character is humorless. We've seen the same from this actor before: intense close-ups, slow, threatening delivery of dialogue, and attitude a mile wide. His Paladin is a warrior, which allows for action and violence. But wouldn't it be interesting if Jackson played the role more low-key, using psychological terror rather than physical force?
The film shines when we're introduced to Griffin (Jamie Bell, "Billy Elliot"), a fellow Jumper David meets in Rome's Coliseum. Griffin serves as the expositional mouthpiece of the film, informing David (and the audience) that David isn't the only Jumper in the world and providing back story about the Paladins' ongoing persecution of Jumpers. Bell has enormous energy and a streetwise toughness that contrasts sharply with Cristensen's laid-back style. Whenever Bell is on screen, he commands it.
The dutiful love interest of sorts is provided by the lovely Anna-Sophia Robb as Millie, an adolescent crush from David's hometown, whom he looks up years later and invites to accompany him to Rome. What happened to "Want to have a cup of coffee?" As written, the role of Millie is meant to be serviceable eye candy, and Millie is swept up in the usual machinations of "things beyond her control," becoming more involved in the plot than she should be.
A trilogy of writers are responsible for the final screenplay of "Jumpers," which looks as if huge chunks are missing. Things move too swiftly, even for a movie about a guy who can scoot from city to city in a millisecond. Viewers are entitled to enough time to get to know the characters so that they care about what happens to them. A quick dissolve, for instance, shows David going from 15 to 20-something, still living in the same dumpy hotel he came to years before. Why is he still there when the cash he's stolen can surely allow him to afford better digs? And why are the teleportation scenes so inconsistent? Sometimes David whisks to another location with just a rush of air and a swooshing sound. Other times, there is serious damage to concrete and floor tiles.
The locations are interesting, but seem to be there more as scenic backdrops to the story than as integral parts of it. With the exception of the Rome sequence, those taking place in Cairo, Tokyo, Prague, and Mexico are intended to be impressive to audiences that have seen all these places many times over on screen. They no longer carry the same impact.
Rated PG-13, "Jumper" uses an interesting premise, but takes all the wrong turns as it unfolds its tale, offering a movie experience long on special effects, short on meaty story and gripping characters. September 22, 2008

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