Skywalker turns globe-hopper in this superhero movie with a twist. But is it any good?
CAST
Hayden Christensen ... David
Samuel L. Jackson ... Roland
Jamie Bell ... Griffin
Rachel Bilson ... Millie
Release Date: 15th February
Running Time: 1hr 28mins
Doug Liman, director of The Bourne Identity, tries to reinvigorate the fantasy genre by bringing his trademark edgy handheld camera style to bear on new blockbuster Jumper. Unfortunately, he fails miserably. Jumper's main problem is a wretched script, the work of three screenwriters as well as the original novelist Stephen Gould. This film is transparently meant to establish an Origin Myth for an action franchise but it rushes through its set-up with unseemly haste. You'll long for more detail on the mythic past of the teleporting Jumpers and their mortal enemies the Paladins, but you won't get it. Nor will you get a good reason to care about any of these characters. These flaws are all the odder given that the screenwriters boast Fight Club, Batman Begins and Mr & Mrs Smith on their collective resumes. Jumper thus bears the dreaded hallmarks of extensive studio meddling during its protracted post-production.
A brief prologue shows our hero David Rice discovering his power to teleport after a school bully's prank leaves him fatally trapped under the ice in a fast flowing river. He then uses this new found ability to escape his abusive father and relocate to NYC where he robs a bank and lives off the proceeds for the next 8 years. In Hayden Christensen's first scene as the grown up David he walks past a TV news report about people stuck on rooftops in a flood which asks how can these people be saved when no one can reach them? 'Well, a Jumper could reach them…' you mutter - but David just heads to the fridge for a beer before flitting off for a night on the town in London. David is selfish to a fault and Christensen's utterly flat performance doesn't make him any more sympathetic.
Jumper slows to a crawl when he revisits Ann Arbor to whisk off his high-school sweetheart Millie (The OC's Rachel Bilson) for a Roman holiday. Exactly why she agrees to go should become one of cinema's most enduring mysteries. In Rome David meets Griffin (Jamie Bell), a fellow Jumper dedicated to killing the Paladins who have hunted the super-powered mutant Jumpers for centuries. Reluctantly, he agrees to team up with Griffin to defeat Roland, leader of the quasi-religious Paladins.
For the most part, the film's teleportation heavy action sequences - involving 'blink and you miss it' globe-trotting - manage to completely underwhelm. The only exceptions are some extremely dangerous teleportation enhanced fast driving, and Jamie Bell's line "God, I hate Chechnya" when the Jumpers unexpectedly land in a warzone. Samuel L Jackson seems to have some fun, too, as Roland - a vicious Jumper-hunter with a rather fetching white hair-do. But his role rather like the film, is too underwritten for him to really make an impact. Ultimately (and ironically) for a film about people who never walk when they can teleport Jumper ends up a sadly pedestrian affair.
Fergal Casey
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