Checkout out Jumper at the movies tonight. Was pretty good — probably not “magnificent”, but still a good piece of entertainment. With a storyline both innovative and familiar, it takes you into one of those classic “good vs evil” stories with a mechanism that is pretty damn interesting and visually very entertaining.
Pretty good acting for the most part — Hayden Christensen is good as the sometimes morally dubious hero, far better than he was in the Star Wars movies. Rachel Bilson is cute and natural and hot as his girlfriend. Samuel L Jackson is as badass as ever as the villain of the piece, something called a “Paladin” that hunts down the Jumpers. And Jamie Bell is possibly the most interesting character in the whole show — a fellow jumper named Griffin who is both hero and villain in the story.
Being able to jump around the world at will is a fascinating idea, and it’s presented excellently visually, especially when they are able to also jump objects around with them. This leads to one of the most amazing fight scenes in movie history, definitely the action highlight of the movie.
Jumper is based on a YA novel and you can see its youthful origins, but possibly it should have been deeper, with some more indepth stuff from the book. It’s clear they chose to limit the scope of the overall story, becasue the ending is good, but pure sequel bait. And it does give me more fiction ideas as well, but that’s for another day …
So Jumper is a fun piece of entertainment with some interesting and appealing visual ideas.