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Jumper

By Jason Tozer     

Director: Doug Liman
Screenplay: David S. Goyer, Jim Uhls, Simon Kinberg
Cast: Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane
Rated: M
Running Time: 88 mins     

Only one word comes to mind when I think about Jumper – potential. How a film can be packed so full of potential and be this under-whelming fails my comprehension.

The premise of Jumper is that certain people, two of them being Anakin Skywalker and Billie Elliot, sorry I mean David (Hayden Christensen) and Griffin (Jamie Bell), can ‘jump’ from any place in the world to another. Simple as that.

It sounds like most people’s dream come true. A croissant for breakfast in Paris, surfing and seafood in Fiji for brunch, a nice spaghetti in Italy for lunch, skiing the slopes of New Zealand in the afternoon and finally dinner in a fancy Manhattan island restaurant.

Apparently, people have been doing it for centuries and the fact they’re having so much fun really pissed off the paladins.

Who are the paladins? I’m not quite sure, all I know is that they’re some religious group who hunt jumpers with high-tech tools and then kill them with real low-tech tools.

How do ‘jumpers’ jump? That I’m not quite sure of either, but it seems it has something to do with wormholes similar to what Jerry O’Connell and co ‘slid’ through in the television series Sliders.

Sometimes these jumps damage the surroundings of the jumper, sometimes they don’t. Why this is I have absolutely no idea.

Sure there seems to be a lot of holes in the story and a lot of unanswered questions, but that would be ok if the action kept your interest and it does, for the very brief periods in which there is actually some action.

For once I’m able to write a review without the fear of inadvertently giving away the ending of the film. The ending is actually another thing I’m unsure of and that’s because the ending is quite obviously in the sequel. Jumper ends just as it is about to redeem all its vagaries and confusion.

If all the uncertainty you feel through out the film isn’t enough to frustrate you then the total lack of an ending combined with the waste of an idea with so much potential will definitely tip you over the edge.

Rating: 2 out of 5



 

 


 
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