Jumper review

It would be fantastic to simply think of a place and then instantly be there. Imagine you're sitting in your New York apartment and crave Japanese food. Boom! The next second you're in Tokyo eating sushi. Or you're in your semi-detached in Manchester and have a burning desire to go surfing. Boom! You're hanging ten at the North Shore in Hawaii. Cool or what? Thus is the essence of Jumper, which stars Hayden Christensen as David Rice, who discovers his ability to jump, or teleport, himself around the world. Sadly though, this film adaptation of Steven Gould's novel doesn't fulfill this potentially intriguing premise and, a short way in, I wished I possessed Rice's ability so I could imagine myself anywhere but in the cinema.

At best Christensen is a mediocre actor possessed of handsome good looks but the emotional depth of mahogany. He is more intent on posing than finding Rice's soul. In his defense he isn't helped by an undemanding script. More surprising is how the normally competent director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) fails to make sense of things or inject anything remotely compelling into the aimless story. For a brief moment, when the baddie turns up in the striking form of the white-haired Samuel L Jackson, it looks like finally something might happen, but when that hope quickly proves unfounded, the remaining time is spent scratching one's head and wondering how the limp Jumper ever got this far.

Events begin when the teenage Rice (Max Thieriot) falls through the ice of a pond while trying to retrieve a present for his schoolfriend Millie (Rachel Bilson) who he is in love with. One second he's drowning, the next he finds himself washed up in the local public library. Upon realizing his teleporting ability, he begins to hone it before using it to jump into the sealed vault of a bank and load up on cash. "Hey, I was 15, what would you have done?" states Rice (Christensen) when we next meet him 8 years later living in a penthouse apartment and spending his time jumping around the world. One typical day might consist of breakfast in the Amazon, lunching in Egypt, afternoon tea at the Kremlin before evening drinks in the Sahara.

This might make for some picturesque cinematography, but it's not exactly a gripping plot. Even when you add the romantic thread of David reuniting with his childhood sweetheart Millie. Only when the mysterious Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) shows up is Rice's apparently idyllic life disrupted. Seems Roland isn't too thrilled about people possessing skills that God hasn't sanctioned. "There are always consequences," he informs Rice. Turns out Roland is a Paladin, an ancient elite organization who hunt and kill Jumpers.

The way Captain Kirk and Co. were beamed up on Star Trek was certainly a far more intriguing way of depicting teleporting than is used here where it happens so frequently as to become unremarkable if not tedious. In addition, so much of the action sequences are a jumbled mess of close-ups and rapid cuts that half the time it's impossible to figure out what the hell's going on, a not unfamiliar trait of the film. At which point you close your eyes and think of home, a bar, anywhere.

Kevin Murphy