Jumper - Movie Review

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Jumper
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What would you do if you found out you could teleport? Without a doubt, I am sure one brief consideration would be to rob a bank. It would be so simple to execute, so simple in fact that the only thing stopping you would be your conscience. Besides, there must be other, more honest ways of making money while being able to hop between destinations. So I'm betting you'd change your answer to say you'd see the Eiffel Tower, or voyage to the top of every mountain and take a picture. Fun. Exciting.

Having such a rare ability would no doubt be filled with possibilities. So it's a wonder why the central character in "Jumper," the film adaptation to the book series of the same name, would limit himself to thievery, but he does. There's a clear message being sent to us, the viewers, as David (Hayden Christensen) lounges in his massive apartment while watching trapped hurricane victims on the nightly news. He is capable of making an incredible difference in the world, but is too busy getting a suntan on top of the Sphinx to care.

In fact, it's a wonder that David isn't massively obese, considering that he literally teleports himself two feet to grab the remote control, or "jumps" across the room to grab a glass of milk.

This film should be science fiction, as in, there should be a science or "rules" to David's ability. It seems like he should only be able to jump to places he has seen in his memories or physically been to, but apparently just looking at a photograph is good enough as long as he's able to "focus." It also seems like there should be limits to what he can take with him. An apartment "seems" like a big finale, until you realize another character just teleported an entire double decker bus out into the desert.

What Jumper needed above all else was a method at being convincing. How cool would it have been if there were more unintentional jumps? What if he accidentally teleported himself while dreaming? What if he looked at a picture of the planet Mars? There's a goldmine of unexplored possibilities here that are never even addressed.

Sure, the Jumps look cool, but with the constant glitches in logic and continuity the film is impossible to focus on.
"Wait a second," you'll say, "What happened to all the people on that double decker bus he just flipped over?"

As a matter of fact, the central characters of David and Griffin, no joke, probably KILL more people in this movie than the villains do. Case in point: in one scene Griffin jumps a truck, while an innocent man is still driving it, to the middle of an Afghanistan battle zone where it is immediately crushed by a tank. While Griffin escapes in the nick of time, the man is most certainly dead.

The strange thing here is that Griffin (played by Jamie Bell) is by far the most interesting character of the bunch, and far more charming in his irresponsible teleportations than David is capable of. But somehow the film sees him as a villain as well.

The most disturbing notion about Jumper is that none of the central characters are heroes at all. I'm not going to ruin the ending here by saying that no one learns any kind of lesson at the end. David doesn't make any further efforts to use his power for good, unless you consider going at it with Rachel Bilson "good," then by all means the man should be considered a saint.

It looks like the only thing he got to do was Jump-HER!

zing!

Don't bother.