Based on the books by author Stephen Gould, Jumper details the life of David Rice, who has the ability to "jump"--to instantly teleport from one place to another, anywhere on the earth, just by thinking about it. Directed by Doug Liman, who gave us The Bourne Identity, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and co-written by Batman Begins’ writer David Goyer, Jumper treats its fantastic premise smartly at first. When a teenaged David accidentally discovers his powers during a run-in with a bully at school, he wastes no time in taking full advantage of his ability to go anywhere he pleases, which includes the inside of a bank vault.
By his early twenties, David has amassed a small fortune for himself and is living the high life--until he runs into Roland, a special agent known as a Paladin. The Paladins not only know about Jumpers, but they’ve been hunting them down for centuries, since the Middle Ages in Europe. Samuel L. Jackson is great as the determined Roland, and Hayden Christensen, his co-star from Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith, is very good as David. The rest of the great cast includes Rachel Bilson as David’s dim-watted girlfriend; the superb Max Thierot as another Jumper; Michel Rooker as David’s dad, along with the always-good Diane Lane as David’s enigmatic mother.
Despite the fact that it clocks in at a very brief 88 minutes, Jumper still tends to drag at around the midway point, and some of the story logic is a bit hard to swallow (if there have been Jumpers since the Middle Ages, then why haven’t these people with this extraordinary power taken over the world by now? The Paladins use the most advanced in modern day technology to hunt them down; but how were the Jumpers stopped way back then?). But Liman, a master action director, keeps thing moving at such a frenzied clip--the characters leap from country to country in the blink of an eye--that any lapses in the storytelling can be forgiven (although the wall-to-wall pop music on the soundtrack got on my nerves at times).
The DVD I reviewed has two versions of the film on both sides of the disc,
giving the viewer the option of watching Jumper in either full or widescreen (I
chose the latter). There’s also a commentary, along with multiple making of
documentaries that are all very well done. Diane Lane’s character arc suggests
that this story isn’t over, and there are dangling hints of a larger war to
come between the Jumpers and the Paladins. Hopefully this fun story will
continue in an even more epic fashion with another film. --SF
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