June 3, 2008

For some, a space time continuum is irrelevant. All they have to do is look at a place and BOOM they are there. This is the case for David Rice. He is the middle schooler who the bully seems to want to pick on the most and has a rough home life. You quickly come to find that David is in love with the out-of-his-league girl, Millie. He wants to give her something special but the moment is quickly ruined by the big bad bully. In an attempt to save her gift, David gets trapped under the ice and is quickly running out of time. Then when all seems lost he finds himself in the Ann Arbor public library.

To better his life, thinking he can take care of himself while discovering how to truly use his new acquired skill, he runs (or rather jumps) away from home seeking a freedom he has only dreamed of. You quickly fast forward to the present where we meet an older David played by Hayden Christensen. He has it all; the big loft apartment, the biggest flat screen television, the modern furniture. He is living every guys bachelor life fantasy in the dream bachelor pad. You can quickly put two and two together to see that he is the perfect bank robber and is never in short supply of money.

After you are brought up to speed on how David’s life has played out you are taken to Costa Ricqa where we meet Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), a Paladin who hunts jumpers and David is next on his list. After an altercation with a Roland in his apartment, David travels back to home to lay low for awhile and see how Millie is doing. It doesn't take too much convincing to get Millie to take a trip to Rome and sightsee together. Here, while trying to break even further into the Coliseum to really get the full tour, David meets Griffin. David is told that he isn’t the only person that can teleport and has just signed up to be in a war that he didn’t know he was a part of, a war between Jumpers and Paladins. The Paladins are led by Roland and they are extremist with their faith and feel that all Jumpers are bad and should be killed because only God has the right to be in all places at once.

Jumper quickly turns into a heart racing action packed visual experience with a little heart warming love story. This movie really hits home on the heart because it is easy to see yourself in David’s shoes. That ranges from abusing his special ablitity to do or get anything he wants that ranges from stealing anything to just traveling to Fiji to catch the best waves or jumpt to Egypt to have lunch on a Sphinx. Then you realize that he does have a heart and all of his actions turn from abuse to wanting to use them to help someone else see things she had only dreamed about to things that will help save her life as well as his own.

I had one big issue with this film, Hayden Christensen. I must admit that his is so much better now than he was in Star Wars but he still has a lot of room to grow as an actor. He doesn’t really do a bad job, but his performance pales compared to the other actors he must work alongside, especially Jamie Bell. This cast has been ripped apart and put back together multiple times. Jamie Bell is the only actor left from the original script that started filming in 2004. Samuel L. Jackson is steller as usual (except for a couple of Snake movies) and does nothing but add excitement and interest into the film. Rachel Bilson looks great as the girl next door that everyone loved who grew up into just another average girl. She really does a great job of capturing her fear and excitement with her eyes and really draws you into every scene she is in.

Filmmaking: 8
If you loved the way the Bourne movies where shot you will love this movie as well. You have almost every camera angle you can think of to get the greatest shot possible in this half live action and half computer generated film. After watching the extra features it was really insightful to see how they shot Jumper. They wanted to keep this movie as real as possible and didn’t want a lot of CG to ruin it. They did a great job of combining the two beautifully. They went to all of the locations in the film (except for Louisiana which doubled at Costa Rica) and really put a strain on the budget, but it paid off very very well for the audience.

Visuals: 10
I love how they did all the teleport shots. Attention to detail was a huge factor and it really paid off once again. You see in the extras that in the first shots to see how they would shoot them they tried everything and wanted to see how certain actions would affect the area around the person teleporting. That varied from air flying and moving objects to leaving particles showing they broke the time continuum.

Then you get to see how they did some of the shots and I loved how they kept it live action whenever possible. They would stop the shot and then have the actors move and then continue rolling. Something you would think everyone would think of but to really get the actors to feel comfortable to stop the scene and move around and then have them feel like they are still in the same shot is a risky, but none of this really affected the acting.

Sound: 9
The sound in Jumper really added a lot to every scene. You have some great background music to really get your heart racing and adding electrifying tension and drama to every fight scene. Then you have some great sound effects when dealing with teleporting. You really feel like each jumper really did something that was not ordinary and took a lot of power to do due to the pure booming sound that is left once they have left each spot and then appear in the next spot.

Overall: 8.6
From the cast to the visuals you will be locked into this action packed film with an unexpected love twist. The fight scenes were amazing in the way teleportation was used and then the fight gadgets do nothing but make them better. You will find yourself wanting to see it again and again!