Description

`Jumper' could be the perfect manipulative teen movie fantasy. Start with a boy who faces a distant, but menacing father in a divorced family where the mother's been absent since his fifth birthday, a bully at school who keeps him from his dream girl, and we have all the makings of an escapist venue about someone who gets and tries to keep it all.

In an early confrontation, David Rice (Hayden Christensen) meets school bully Mike as he connects with Mike's girlfriend, Millie Harris (Rachel Bilser). He's sharing a glass bubble snow scene with her when Mike confiscates it and throws it onmore… a frozen river. Predictably, David falls through the ice while retrieving it, and remarkably, Millie's rescue attempts don't have her joining him through the same ice; even more mysterious is how Dave gets transported to the local Ann Arbor Library before he can suffocate under a sheet of unbroken ice.

Now he's discovered magical powers that enable him to jump ahead short and long distances in hyper-cyber leaps with invisible traces. If he can only hone it and use it at will, he can globe trot the world and use it at whim. We not only go forward physically, but we do so in time frames as well with casual announcements of passing time. (The movie does this--not the powers.) Relationships would surely suffer, but not for him. We see him elude his overbearing father, but his trek seems like a lonely one with no one he can share his gift.

His first act is to do mission impossible and rob an impenetrable bank. In one of the movie's time warps, we leap ahead to David sitting in his upscale New York apartment. Never mind that this kid who wouldn't have the credit history or employment record to justify his application. Having forgotten Millie for some years, he's able to pick up a girl at a London pub just after hanging out on one of the four faces of Big Ben. After enough fooling around, he decides he's grown lonesome for Millie, so he heads (I should say jumps) back to Ann Arbor years later where he finds she's supporting her college expenses as a bar maid. Here he also meets a drunken Mike where the conversation turns as tipsy as his beer glass. Again enamored by the contrast of brutish Mike to his civility and maybe a little more than impressed by David's ability to throttle his nemesis through powerful transport, Millie is his. Not wanting to be peculiar in her eyes, David satisfies her desire to travel the world, using traditional money instead of his magical powers.

There has to be a catch. After the bank robbery, NSA operative, Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) is hot on his trail and knowledgeable about the Jumpers. Using an electrical device, Roland is able to stave off jumping powers by shocking the Jumper's brain waves. Not able to transport, he nevertheless, uses photographs to unlock the path of his suspects' movements. Labeled an Inquisition figure, Roland roars, "Only God should have the power to be all places at all times." So instead of an investigative interest in the bank robbery, we get a jealous preacher. If there's no consolation in the chase, then we're at least better informed when David locks heads with British fellow jumper, Griffin (Jamie Bell).

In many ways the movie goes nowhere. The scenes where he moves ahead are done with genuine expressions by the actors, but the special effects draw attention to themselves. It's much more satisfying to watch the believable blur in a 'Bourne' movie. The transport gets tiresome at times. Credibility also takes a back seat. Maybe he can jump to Maui, but does it automatically make him a champion surfer? There are no good guys here (except for one sweet and innocent girl). That may work for 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,' but not here. Robbing a bank doesn't make our protagonist likable or gain our sympathies. Without intending to do so, the film highlights much of sixties' science fiction which looked upon such advancements with a wary eye and undermined them with consequences. (Okay, so this is more fantasy than anything else, but it's the same idea.) I did like the mystery of David's mother (Diane Lane), but even that treatment is limited. If you want a real vehicle for the imagination, read Philip Jose' Farmers' `To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Riverworld Saga, Book 1),' a truly transporting work--one that expertly fuses space and time with the necessary caveats in ways this movie does not.

(Based on a novel Jumper: A Novel (Jumper) by Steven Gould.)

Cast list

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Info:

Category:

Movies > Films

Case Type:

DVD

Release Type:

Retail

Language:

English

Region:

R1

Comments:

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Cover Info:

Title:

Jumper (2008) R1 Retail DVD

Part:

Front

Dimensions:

3204 x 2150 px

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4,366 KB

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14/07/08 by rwhager3

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