DVD : Jumper [2008]

Rating: - strangely average but far from terrible.
There is a lot of back story to this film which s cleary hinted at but never delved into to any serious degree, which would be fine if the film were strong enough to guarantee a franchise coming out of it. Sadly it just isn't that good, the effects are solid the acting is all pretty good although it won't win any oscars. the story has potential but it never lives upto to that potential, perhaps if it tries to do less in its running time and let the drama breath it might have been better. might. as it is it is a very well made but run of the mill action/chase movie.

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Rating: - Terrible
This is truly a terrible,terrible,terrible,terrible,pointless film that has probably the worst acting and plotline since the birth of cinema. Terrible!

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Rating: - Ignore the negativity
After all of the negative reviews I read about this movie, I was reluctant to spend money on the DVD until my son persuaded me. I was in for a surprise. This is a really good, thrills and spills action flick. Myself, my husband and my son all loved it. I'm not a fangirl of HC in any way, but I'm coming to the conclusion that after the disappointment of the star wars prequels it isn't 'fashionable' to give Christiansen a fair review these days. He did a damned good job. In fact there was a scene that had all of the grief that should have been AOTC. Definately give this one a try. I'm already looking forward to a sequel.

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Rating: - LIMAN'S LEAST CHARISMATIC MOVIE
Since he became a `name', all Doug Liman movies have arrived under a cloud: one thick with scuttlebutt of over-running shoots, studio arguments and disgruntled (preferably injured) cast and crew. But so far those clouds have always wafted by as the movie turns out to be rather a blast. It happened with The Bourne Identity and again with Mr and Mrs Smith. Liman doesn't release his creations until he's good and ready, taking his time and throwing everything at the wall until something good sticks, hence the rumours of trouble. Jumper, though great fun in spurts, is the first of his films not to have benefited from the technique. It is instead a little dizzy.

That it doesn't fully deliver on its promise is not down to the lack of a good central idea. The premise is bulging with possibility, boiling down to the fact that in our world exist `Jumpers', people who can teleport anywhere, as long as they know what it looks like. They are (apparently) all young, male and handsome, blessed with very low body fat despite never lifting a finger to reach for a remote control. Chasing them are `Paladins', an international band of religious fanatics determined to exterminate all jumpers because only God should have the power to be in all places at once. It's a simple reason and a believable one. Wars have been fought for less.

Sadly, that's everything there is to the story. The Paladins catch up with our hero, David (Hayden Christensen) after he's spent eight years robbing banks, and try to kill him, while he keeps hopping across continents to avoid them. We don't see much deeper on either side, and Liman and his screenwriters, who have proven themselves able on other projects, can't conjure a meaty subplot. Samuel L. Jackson's Paladin chief Roland is a bad guy who struggles to fill out a second dimension, and his employees are nameless goons. David is given some sketchy abandonment issues, which lead to a tacked-on coda, but otherwise he's a bit of a blank canvas. Rachel Bilson as his spunky love interest and Jamie Bell as Griffin, a more charismatic, anarchic jumper who fills David in on the history of the Jumper/Paladin war, add a much-needed and welcome shot of charm and zest, if not depth.

So, it's a thin film, but one not without its share of delights. Liman has always been most creative when pointing his camera at two people attacking each other. The jumping effect, meanwhile, is faultlessly executed - a sort of hazy implosion that leaves a sphere of destruction around it - and when Liman finds good use for it, generally involving both David and Griffin, it's fantastic. In the film's best sequence, the pair fight for possession of a detonator, a breathless scrap that takes them from pyramids, to a busy freeway, to the Empire State Building. When delighting in its premise in such a way, the movie becomes an absolute joy.

The overall impression Jumper leaves is much the same as the first X-Men movie: there are plenty of good ideas, and enough going on for a satisfying experience, yet nothing catches or coheres in quite the way you wish. In short, this feels like a good prologue to a bigger event. Here's hoping that, as X-Men did, this leads to a sequel that can lace its precursor's loose strands into something spectacular.

Verdict
It's Liman's least charismatic action movie and the least developed, but it still packs some cracking action into its brief running time and lays foundations on which a great franchise could be built.

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Rating: - Don't Jump at the chance with this film........
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.