Jumper (Special Edition + Digital Copy) [Blu-ray]

good movie good acting g g g gm g g g g g g g g g g g g g g hg jh

Jumpers(released Feb/08)stars Hayden Christensen (Max Thieriot) as David Rice,Rachel Bilson (AnnaSophia Robb) as Millie Harris,Samuel L. Jackson as Roland Cox,Jamie Bell as Griffin,Diane Lane as Mary Rice,and others.This Doug Liman directed film is an uneven effort,which never seems to build up any steam for any length of time,thus losing the interest of the viewer very quickly.
The film opens as a younger David Rice is in high school.A bully throws a snow globe onto some ice,which David retrieves.However the ice gives way and the current pulls him under.Just as he is about to drown he teleports himself into the local library.From here he tries to understand his new found abilities.He runs away from home and goes to live in New York where he robs banks in order to survive on his own.
years pass and it seems his jumping has not gone unnoticed,as one Roland Cox is the head of an agency that tracks and kills jumpers.On a return trip to his apartment he is confronted by Cox who tries to rope him with steel cables which are electrified,to prevent him from jumping.He barely manages to get away and flees home.He meets up with his old flame whom he escorts to Rome.While in the Coliseum he meets up with another jumper called Griffin.He explains the folks after him are Paladins(have gun will travel?),an ancient order dedicated to wiping out all jumpers.In short order the two confront two such men,but escape.They escape the Paladins,but not the local police who arrest David.While in jail his mother visits him and releases him.He takes his girlfriend to the airport and she flies home alone.
David and Griffin form a brief partnership to get Cox.Meanwhile Cox has attempted to kill David's father,who he finds and takes to a hospital.David then returns to his girlfriend and snatches her away to Griffins hideaway.But jumpers leave slight openings which Cox uses to find them with.A fight ensues resulting in Millie's capture.David returns to her but is captured.He teleports part of the building to the river in which he almost drowned in years before,then back to the library.However Cox has been pulled along with him and he teleports him to a remote cave above the Grand Canyon.
The film ends as David visits his mother and she explains she is in fact a Paladin also,and gives him a head start.David and Millie jump to a destination unknown.
The film ends abruptly and I thought there was more coming when it did.There are a ton of unanswered questions in this film,the least of which is David's mother.It appeared to me she was also a jumper,but she turns out to be a Paladin too,who normally don't have that ability.David apparently first jumped at five,but for some unknown reason doesn't remember that.What five year old wouldn't recall such a thing when he grew up? At one point the older David is looking at a TV new story about people stranded in a river atop a car,with the reporter questioning as to how they could be rescued.I thought the next scene would be David jumping there to at least do SOME good,instead of just taking(money)and living off the avails of others.But the film just breezes past it.The questions go on and on.As said previously it is a hodge podge of a film that never leaves you invested in the characters for any length of time whatsoever.Even the wonderful filming locales such as Rome or in Egypt couldn't make up for the interest loss.It's as if the filmmakers didn't have much of a vested interest in making it the film themselves,which translated into apathy on screen.
Technically speaking the film is in its w/s a/r of 2:40:1.Extras include:commentary,an animated graphic novel of Davids story,three featurettes and some deleted scenes.This two disc set contains the film disc and extras and a digital copy.
All in all a film with lots of potential but with a lacklustre script and execution by its makers.You soon lose any interest in the characters,which inevitably will sink a film faster than a cement block in the Hudson.2 1/2 - 3 stars.

For the generation that won't wait for anything, the teleporting protagonists of Jumper may have more appeal than the likes of Spiderman and Wolverine. If you skip ads, sneak a peek at the last chapter of a book, have ever wanted to fast forward through a boring flight, or truncate the dull commute to work, it may be your fantasies that Hayden Christensen is living in Bourne director Doug Liman's globe-trotting sci-fi outing.

Not content with such mundane shortcuts, gadabout Christensen is disposed to good living - financed by teleporting away the contents of bank - in a New York penthouse; he breakfasts on top of the Sphinx, checks out London from the clock-face of Big Ben before going on the pull, and flits in and out of a series of holiday hot-spot locations that resemble a fast flick through a travel-agent's plushest brochure. But one day jumper-hunter Samuel L. Jackson - wearing the daftest hairpiece since Morgan Freeman impersonated R. Lee Ermey in Dreamcatcher - is waiting for him with a wake-up call. Jackson is a Paladin, a sect that has been hunting those Godless teleporters since at least the middle-ages, though the invention of electricity has given them the ability to pin the fidgety globetrotters down while they run them through with a nasty hunting-knife.

Jumper had a lot of potential and it was a frustrating film. It's beautifully shot, with an intriguing premise, and a great performance from Samuel L. Jackson. Unfortunately, it's also got some cringe worthy dialog, distractingly large plot holes, and a zero charisma female lead in Rachel Bilson. The film looks great, featuring some jaw-dropping location photography, but the plot is a hodgepodge of underdeveloped elements. Diane Lane gets third billing for about five minutes of screen time in a throwaway role with absolutely no payoff. Jamie Bell, easily the best of the cast aside from Jackson, crafts a far more interesting character than lead Hayden Christensen, yet the script (credited to three different writers) regulates him to little more than a plot device. Worst of all is Rachel Bilson's character, who seems like an afterthought at best. The script's paper-thin characterization forces her to flesh out her role with sheer charisma, and, unlike Jackson, she's just not up to it.

There are moments, more than a few, in fact, where Jumper gets it right. The opening sequence, leading up to Christensen's character's discovery of his powers it spot-on, as are just about every one of Jackson's scenes, but these only serve to build false hope. This is a movie in search of an identity. Is it a super-hero movie? A romance? A sci-fi epic? Jumper feels like a movie made by a committee hell-bent on creating a franchise and that, ultimately, proves to be its undoing. Much as Jackson's character is fond of saying that no man should be all places at all times; no movie should be all things to all people. Bottom Line: Jumper is an unfortunate mess of a movie that wastes some beautiful photography and a great performance by Samuel L. Jackson.