Click to play videoCast: Hayden Christensen, Samuel L Jackson, Jamie Bell, Diane Lane
Director: Doug Lima
Jumper is the kind of movie one tries hard to like, because it's about ordinary people who discover they're gifted with extraordinary powers. In the case of this film, the power to teleport oneself anywhere.
So you could be sitting in your living room one moment, and the next moment you're on top of the Empire State Building in New York, or better still, relaxing on the head of the Sphinx in Egypt. Fun, ha?
Indeed a lot of fun for Hayden Christensen who plays the protagonist of this film, a teenager who finds out he has this power, and uses it to chuck his miserable life with his alcoholic father and to live the life of a spoilt little rich kid instead. He steals banks, wears fancy clothes, picks up gorgeous blondes at bars, lives in a swanky fully-furnished apartment and does pretty much nothing else. Now who wouldn't want that life?
But while on a visit to the Colosseum in Rome with his old crush, he makes two alarming discoveries -- one, that he isn't the only guy alive with such powers, in fact he belongs to a breed of such unusually gifted people known as Jumpers, and two, there's another breed of people known as Paladins whose mission in life is to wipe out the Jumpers from this planet.
Our hero finds an ally in Jamie Bell who plays another Jumper, and together they try to dodge a stubborn Paladin, Samuel Jackson, who's determined to nail them at any cost.
I won't deny the film's got an interesting premise, but truth be told that's all there is to it - a premise, and nothing else. The film never once attempts to explain who Jumpers really are, how they came to acquire such powers, and why exactly the Paladins want to kill them.
After the initial excitement of watching our hero teleport himself from one stunning location to another, that novelty begins to fade and you want them to get on with the story, but really there is nothing more to fall back on.
Sure it's got a bunch of superb action scenes, but that's not enough to hold your interest beyond a point. Sitting there in your seat watching Jumper, you're going to wish YOU had been blessed with the same power, so you could vanish from the cinema and be transported back into your bed for a nap instead!
So that's a thumbs down and one out of five for director Doug Liman's Jumper, save yourself the trouble entirely and stay far, far away.
Rating: 2 / 5 (Average)
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