Jumper
Written by David S. Goyer and Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg
Directed by Doug Liman
20th Century Fox
2008
Rating:


"Jumper" is a sci-fi film without a cosmology, a superhero film with no hero and a launch for an action franchise that seems unlikely to have a second entry.

David Rice (Hayden Christensen) is among an unnumbered blessed/cursed souls with the ability to teleport anywhere in the world as long as he can see his jumping location or has seen it before, much like "X-Men's" Nightcrawler. David discovers this ability while in a state of desperation when, in high school, he falls through the ice of a river and wills himself to the local library. The development of David's power is wonderful in its anywhere-but-here philosophy. There's even some fun to be had in David's early crime spree of effortlessly robbing banks and stores to support a lavish lifestyle.

But in any decent superhero story, David would be the villain, or at least the misguided youth who needs to learn the responsibility of his powers from a better hero. David is impossibly selfish, and his flaws aren't helped by the typically petulant performance of Christensen.

David's life of leisure is interrupted when a barely explained group of supposed religious zealots called the Paladins arrive with curious, baffling weapons to kill David simply because "only God should have the power to be in all places at all times" (perhaps if David explained to them he's only technically ever in one place at one time, it would've saved him some trouble). To target the elusive David, Paladin captain Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) goes after David's estranged father (Michael Rooker) and Millie (Rachel Bilson), a high school crush who David has finally found the nerve to romance. Another Jumper, the more interesting and more motivated Griffin (Jamie Bell), joins David to take down Roland.

"Jumper" has huge effects – the most impressive sequence involves a fight between David and Roland that goes from the Great Pyramids to Tokyo to the Arctic to a freeway to a swimming pool to Chechnya – yet its story is fairly minor, nothing like Bryan Singer's operatic "Superman Returns" and "X-Men" films (despite having a heretofore perfect batting average with "Swingers," "Go," "The Bourne Identity" and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," director Doug Liman proves to be no Bryan Singer). Because David is so egocentric, his fight to save Millie will have nothing to do with a larger battle to save anyone else, let alone the world. Worse, David's jumping actually imperils innocent bystanders. The hint of a larger Jumper community and the Paladins' history stretching back to the Inquisition suggests a world this film has no interest in because it would get in the way of the mindless jumping effects it cribs from "X2," a film that knows how to blend spectacle with mythology and emotion.

Posted Sunday, February 17, 2008

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http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/archives/001055.php