The Case for Woolly Jumpers

The tag line should have read “Take a Jump!”.

But it didn’t. Because Jumper isn’t that kind of movie.

What kind is it? It is pretty action, never mind the consequences or motivations. The “heroes” (main man Hayden Christensen portraying all the style and flair that made his outing as Anakin Skywalker so… memorable) are meant to be the Jumpers but their casual disregard for property rights or the lives of non-Jumpers really makes them quite unsympathetic. The “villains” are the cattle-prod wielding Paladins, led by a blond Samuel L Jackson who seems to get around just as quickly as the Jumpers do.

The plot and backstory promise more: there is a history to the Palandin/Jumper conflict that is never entered into; there is a science behind the Jumping talent that is kind of taken as a given; there are atrocities committed by Jumpers that have never made it into the history books (though the Paladin exploits had); Diane Lane’s character’s story. But what is delivered is just an excuse for some fairly cool action sequences and fairly decent special effects.

Samuel L Jackson plays the hard, bad man out to save the world. His character would have had some extra panache if he had a random bible quote to intone along side his cries of “abomination against God!” as he slaughters Jumpers, but perhaps that ended up on the cutting room floor. They probably ended up beside most of Diane Lane’s scenes, as she is criminally underused and appears for a total of about 2 minutes.

This is really Hayden Christenson’s film. It’s just a pity the character he plays is the same whiny, spoiled brat I came to know and loathe in the Star Wars films. I wondered sometimes what his character was thinking: “I know, I now realise I am being hunted by a powerful, resourceful opponent hell-bent on killing me – a perfect time to woo my high school crush”; “This place is closed but I am going to refuse to come back tomorrow because they are Italian and therefore unreasonable”; “I really need this guys help because… well, actually, I’ll do it all on my own”. Most of the time though, my brain stayed off.

The film is meant to be based on a book, but one assumes a lot of that ended up out of the script too (screenplay writer’s thinking: “Jumpers and Paladins. Great idea! Don’t need the book anymore…”). Taken as a bit of light froth, it is a fairly fast-paced action film coming in at a brief 90 minutes length. But that’s about it.

Verdict: Never mind the story, show me the special effects. Five jumps out of ten, with some extra points for giving Diane Lane a bad arse entry with a “means business” haircut and outfit – that is then criminally wasted.