Come watch Kurt Wagner, also known as the Incredible Nightcrawler, “Bamf” his way across the globe in the first spin-off of the successful “X-Men” movie franchise.
Oh, whoops wrong movie. Sorry, “Jumper.” Let me try this again.
Come watch Hayden Christensen take this teleporting movie way too seriously and see him play a cat and mouse game with the evil Paladins, a group of people who track and try to kill the Jumpers who can move through time and space just by thinking of a destination. Personally, I would be jealous of that ability. I guess I’ll just have to stick with my special powers of sarcasm.
After falling through the ice while retrieving a snow globe for his crush, a young David Rice (Max Thieriot, the older David played by Christensen) finds himself coughing up a water lung in the library instead of drowning under the water. He slinks home in puzzlement while voice-overs clarify his feelings, and then does what any normal boy would do; leaves his home because his father (Michael Rooker) is a jerk face, practices controlling his powers and then decides to rob a bank vault using honed powers. Can’t really blame him there. I suspect with that power, my moral compass would become a bit skewed.
Flash forward a few years. David is now living the life of a high roller. He’s extremely rich, living in expensive apartments all over the world, has women falling all over him and teleports all over his place. Like getting up and opening the door is such a burden. I wonder if his cologne of choice is Eau du Brimstone.
After a close call with head honcho Paladin, Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), David decides to peek in on his crush since they were five, Millie (Rachel Bilson). He finds her working at a bar in Ann Arbor, stares at her for 45 minutes, and when he tries to leave, he renews an old grudge against a childhood bully and ends up teleporting him inside a vault. That’s to ensure bully doesn’t escape so he can tell all to the Paladins when they comes digging for clues as to where the Jumper is, and whom he may care for. Sneaky devils.
Back in Ann Arbor after talking to Millie for three minutes tops, they jet off to Rome so he can show off to her. By the way, these two characters have no chemistry.
From there, a frenetically boring showdown of life and death begins.
All in all, there wasn’t much I liked about “Jumper,” (the acting, the bland dialogue, Michigan) but it did have a few bright spots. Exotic locations (like Japan, Egypt and Italy) are always a plus, and the movie became better when other Jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) was on screen. (He, unlike some others, seemed to have a lot of fun with this teleporting role and it showed.)
But the thing I loved about this movie was how Roland kept repeating the same lines “Only God should have this power” to the caught Jumpers and then proceeded (or tried to) kill them. I guess he’s a passenger on the boat that makes warped sense. Or is it time warped sense?
I gave this film a C-.
Dedra Cordle is a Messenger staff writer.
