2008 Woodie Awards
A movie worth jumping out the window, screaming for help
Alex Bethke
Issue date: 2/27/08 Section: Juice
If you've watched any sort of television in the last three months, then you knew the movie Jumper was coming to theaters. It has been advertised for months, including: sponsorship of playoff football games, cast appearances at the Super Bowl and on American Idol, as well as a tie-in advertisement with HP that featured Hayden Christensen "jumping" around the screen during a seemingly normal HP commercial. I have a feeling all this advertising was to get you to see the film the first weekend it hit the silver screens, because after reading this review, or any other for that matter, you won't want to see it.
The film follows David Rice (Christensen, Star Wars, Awake) who inadvertently discovers he has the power to teleport during a potentially fatal accident. He then uses his unique ability to escape from his lousy father and starts robbing banks. David simply teleports into the vault, takes the money and teleports back to his apartment with the loot.
What David doesn't know is that after eight years of robbing banks, someone has caught on to what he's up to. That person is known as Roland (Samuel L. Jackson). Roland is a Paladin, an organization dedicated to eliminating Jumpers. David escapes his first run-in with Roland and returns to his hometown in pursuit of his teenage crush, Millie (Rachel Bilson, The Last Kiss, The O.C.). He whisks her away to a romantic vacation in Rome but in doing so, puts her at risk as well.
That's where David meets Griffin (Jamie Bell, Flags of Our Fathers, King Kong), another Jumper who is well aware of the battle between their kind and the Paladins. Griffin educates David on the history of both Jumpers and Paladins all the way back to medieval times and welcomes David to the war.
Jamie Bell stands out as the single highlight of this movie. His character gets to have the most fun with his exuberant and punk type personality. Hayden Christensen is likeable enough but has failed to prove, at least to me, that he can truly act. His role in Shattered Glass is the closest to "good" that I can think of. He has potential but needs to deliver a breakout performance sometime in the near future for me to really believe in his abilities as an actor. Let's face it, anyone could have been waving around that light saber, and you still would have loved it.
The film follows David Rice (Christensen, Star Wars, Awake) who inadvertently discovers he has the power to teleport during a potentially fatal accident. He then uses his unique ability to escape from his lousy father and starts robbing banks. David simply teleports into the vault, takes the money and teleports back to his apartment with the loot.
What David doesn't know is that after eight years of robbing banks, someone has caught on to what he's up to. That person is known as Roland (Samuel L. Jackson). Roland is a Paladin, an organization dedicated to eliminating Jumpers. David escapes his first run-in with Roland and returns to his hometown in pursuit of his teenage crush, Millie (Rachel Bilson, The Last Kiss, The O.C.). He whisks her away to a romantic vacation in Rome but in doing so, puts her at risk as well.
That's where David meets Griffin (Jamie Bell, Flags of Our Fathers, King Kong), another Jumper who is well aware of the battle between their kind and the Paladins. Griffin educates David on the history of both Jumpers and Paladins all the way back to medieval times and welcomes David to the war.
Jamie Bell stands out as the single highlight of this movie. His character gets to have the most fun with his exuberant and punk type personality. Hayden Christensen is likeable enough but has failed to prove, at least to me, that he can truly act. His role in Shattered Glass is the closest to "good" that I can think of. He has potential but needs to deliver a breakout performance sometime in the near future for me to really believe in his abilities as an actor. Let's face it, anyone could have been waving around that light saber, and you still would have loved it.
Be the first to comment on this story