"Jumper" (2008) - Movie Review

It would have been a cake walk to pitch this idea and get a green light on the script. Teleporting around the world and some one chasing them and then it ends there. No more meat to the product and hence have characters act dumb and dumber which makes “Jumper” a nice cool theme to lure the audience and after that fail them with an abysmal plot. This is the film adapted from a novel of same name by Steven Gould and I am not sure whether the book is of same cadre.

Director Doug Liman who has good eye for rapid action films like “The Bourne Identity” and “Go” has relied mainly on the phenomenon than the characters in “Jumper”. This leads the jumpers along with the other characters to be lost completely. There are no back grounds, not much of explanations but deep loud voice of Samuel L. Jackson now and then comes threatening for no reason. Young David (Max Thieriot) learns that he has the ability to teleport with a jolt around his from and to places pretty much anywhere in the world. Having to deal with a single abusive father and his mom (Diane Lane to the destructive story) leaving them at early age, he decides to call it time with his newly realized power. He moves to New York City and starts robbing banks. A particular character in the film “Thank you for Smoking” will say to promote smoking they will have a love making scene in the upcoming film between Brad Pitt and Angleina Jolie over space and then smoke. Another character will ask how to substantiate the atmospheric catastrophe in space and he will say that, “Sure we will have a simple line in the film like “Thanks for inventing..so and so thing””. There are at least ten to fifteen of those in this film.

Eight years later, David (played by Hayden Christensen) is living high life with hitting girls in a pub in London for his night life. Also he chooses high elevation places to visit now and then or may be so that the camera can zoom out to give us the magnanimous location he has jumped. And for some one who can be as lazy as possible, he is physically damn fit. If you see a scene wherein he jumps to pick up a remote a foot away, we know who he is, one of us, the lethargic couch potatoes. So there is this strange group of people who are called as Paladins and the main agent (or maybe head Paladin or something) Roland Cox (Samuel L. Jackson) hunts these jumpers (apparently there are many jumpers and again the one line magic “It is been happening from medieval”). He kills them because they cannot be “God”. Even religious fanatics will not be so stupid to have an ideology like that. To see Samuel L. Jackson in this film is sad.

When these guys go about places, they are not aware of what might be there at the destination. A busy road or banging on a person but they are unnoticed for so many years (from medieval times). And they can take people along with them and leave them stranding in a nowhere place. In fact at one point, another jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) teleports a running bus and you wonder so much for secrecy. They would have at least transported 10 – 20 people to some other country. Still no one is much concerned.

Now to the dumbest character in the whole movie, David’s child hood sweet heart Millie (Rachel Bison). David is thought to be dead during a bad prank turning him to drown from where he transports first. He comes back after 8 years and knocks on her door. Her mother comes out believes the word of this guy to be David and gives location of her daughter. If that’s stupid, he identifies her and she identifies him without any issue. Hold on, then he asks her to come to Rome and without any doubt she goes there. After 10 hours of first class flight, top luxurious hotel stay and couple of easy breaking into the Colosseum and finally an arrest and break out, she asks “You are not telling the truth”. It is so mean to the viewers to portray a character like this.

Doug Liman needs to choose the correct script for an entertainer next time. The teleport is cool but it gets boring in like 5 minutes. If they can teleport anywhere, why not space, of course with proper gears (which they can steal). It is like “X-Men” but “X-Men” have some explanation and mainly a character residing in each of them. They are confused and misguided. Pretty easily David steals and tells “Hey I was 15 and of course I am going to pay back”. He does not reform but gets a girl friend who finally knows what he is doing after an hour and half boring movie.