Monday, August 11, 2014

Jumper (2008)

Director: Doug Liman                                   Writers: David S. Goyer & Jim Uhls
Film Score: John Powell                               Cinematography: Barry Peterson
Starring: Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, Rachel Bilson and Samuel L. Jackson

This film is absolutely maddening. There is nothing worse that watching characters who make stupid, nonsensical choices. You want to grab them by the shirt and smack some sense into them but, no, they go right on being idiots. It’s a shame because the premise had so much potential, and to be honest the film looks great and should have been a huge hit. But when the script has characters behaving like morons, and there’s no one around to tell them to change it . . . it’s absolutely maddening. Jumper began its existence as a young adult novel by Steven Gould, but when it came time to produce a screenplay the studio combined elements of the first three novels in the series and left all of the motivation on the writing room floor. Director Doug Liman should have known better. He directed the first film, The Bourne Identity, in the Bourne franchise and went on to produce the next two. The fact that he didn’t take the screenwriters to task for their glaring omissions is disappointing in the extreme.

The film begins with teenager in school who falls through the ice in a river in Ann Arbor and suddenly teleports to the public library. Once he learns how to control this power he leaves his father, Michael Rooker, and heads out on his own. First stop, robbing a bank. But instead of taking a little money and moving on to the next bank, no, he takes as much as he can carry, which alerts Samuel L. Jackson that there must be a jumper involved. This is only the first of the boneheaded decisions that this character makes. Eight years later he’s Hayden Christensen and he’s living in style, traveling the world, and oblivious that Jackson is onto him. Then we see Jackson capture another jumper with electricity and kill him. Why? We never learn any reason why Jackson is so angry or why he feels he has to kill jumpers. There is simply no explanation. In one of Christensen’s hops he goes to London and visits a bar where Jamie Bell is and Bell knows he a jumper. How? I have no idea. Going through the videotapes at the bank, Jackson is able to trace Christensen back to his apartment and nearly captures him. But Christensen escapes and after taking some time to recover, he goes to find his childhood sweetheart back in his hometown and they plan a trip to Rome together. But when they get there Bell is waiting, along with two of Jackson’s associates called Paladins. And speaking of Paladins, Diane Lane is wasted in a tiny role whose purpose is only to set up a sequel that, mercifully, never came.

Just one example of the moronic choices that Christensen makes is when he goes back to find his girlfriend, Rachel Bilson. She manages to escape from Rome and gets on a plane while Christensen jumps to follow Bell and discovers that the Paladins not only want to kill the jumpers but their families too. And that includes Bilson. Christensen makes his way to her apartment and when he sees Jackson coming up the stairs all he has to do is jump with Bilson somewhere, anywhere, and explain it to her in relative peace. Does he do that? Of course not. He doesn’t want to shock her, I get it, but it’s too late for that. So he dinks around and waits until the last possible second, when Jackson is already through the door, before jumping with her--which he was going to have to do anyway--leaving a hole that Jackson can come through and follow him. And there are a half dozen more similar hesitations that make no sense. Jump already, then figure things out. Unfortunately the screenwriters were trying to manufacture suspense where it didn’t actually exist and ruined what otherwise could have been a very effective film. And I wanted to like the film. It was slick and the effects were great, but unfortunately it was all for nothing. Jumper was a great idea that was worth filming and was unfortunately ruined by a bad screenplay.

2 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed the movie and mybe sometimes you just need to be moron or else there is no worth working

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  2. This movie did absolutely everything opposite to the original characters and story. Book: David carefully studies and masters his ability. Movie: he’s a blundering moron. Book: his ability is never explained. Movie: feels the need to create an entire backstory mythos but does so very poorly. I could go on. It’s like the producers/directors of this movie hated the book’s author and bought the rights only to destroy it.

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