Jump to it
Anyone
who’s been on a long-haul flight will surely relate to Doug
Liman’s new action-thriller, Jumper. Who among
us hasn’t, during those seemingly interminable hours trapped
in a plane, wished we could just teleport ourselves to our destination?
Just imagine – no jet lag, no lost luggage, no customs clearance…
bliss.
But I digress. Yes, Jumper is a movie about
teleporting, the idea that someone can instantaneously “jump”
from one spot on the Earth to another. As you can imagine, the
film requires considerable suspension of disbelief; but in Liman’s
assured hands, it becomes an exciting, if not always very logical,
thrill ride.
Liman started his career as an indie filmmaker,
making “little” films like Swingers (the
movie that brought Vince Vaughn to Hollywood’s attention)
and Go. Since then, he’s graduated to big-budget
studio films, notably The Bourne Identity and Mr
& Mrs Smith. And while Jumper is clearly a “smaller”
film than those, his penchant for action movies seems to continue
unabated.
As noted, a “jumper” is someone with
the ability to teleport. The particular jumper in question is
David Rice (Hayden Christensen). David is an awkward kid at school
when he discovers his power in the middle of a traumatic incident.
Faced with a no-good father (Michael Rooker), David decided to
use his gift to escape from life in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Flash
forward a few years and David is living the life of luxury in
New York. Of course, being able to just appear in spots proves
very handy financially – especially when those spots are
bank vaults. But his idyllic lifestyle is shattered by the appearance
of Roland Cox (Samuel L Jackson). Turns out Roland is a paladin;
a member of a secret society sworn to eliminate jumpers from the
world. David escapes Roland’s clutches and makes a jump
back home to Ann Arbor and hooks up with his high-school sweetheart
Millie (Rachel Bilson). When the prospect of romance blossoms,
he whisks her off to Rome (on an aircraft); but it could end up
being a fatal error.
You can see the influence of The Bourne Identity
in this film. The picturesque locales (Rome, Tokyo and Egypt to
name a few), the virtually non-stop action, the spectacular stunts
and the shadowy world the characters inhabit all echo Liman’s
earlier film. He works however from a screenplay based on Steven
Gould’s book, so it's sufficiently removed that the two
films feel markedly different.
There’s a lot of CGI in the film as you might
expect, but Liman makes good use of it; particularly in depicting
the “jumps”. It tends to get a little much towards
the end, but even then, Liman doesn’t lose control of his
story.
What
is annoying about the film is that the script runs out of ideas
at times. It seems that in order to provide more time for the
action, the plot simply marches on the spot for long stretches.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in the Rome sequences, where
I lost count of how many times Millie asks David the same question,
simply to get no answer.
It also particularly irks me that Liman very deliberately
sets things up for a sequel, starring noted actors who make brief
appearances in this film.
Hayden Chrstensen does a reasonable job as the action
hero, but I think his forte remains smaller films. He doesn't
really get to act that much here, as his character is pretty much
constantly on the run. Rachel Bilson adds a decent spalsh of glamour,
although I found her damsel-in-distress routine a bit tiresome
at times. Jamie Bell is a world away from Billy Elliot
as a jumper with a chip on his shoulder; and Samuel L Jackson
sports yet another outrageous hairstyle and a ton of attitude
as Roland.
Jumper isn't a hugely deep or insightful
film; but it's a lot of fun. It certainly doesn't make a lot of
demands; although the impressive set of extras with the DVD do
give it a bit more substance. It's a popcorn movie – but
it's still a pretty good one.
David Edwards
