Jumper DVD Review

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"Jumper" reviews

DVD

Jumper

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-06-13 16:50:16

Provider

DVD Review

Doug Liman's latest film may have been sequel friendly but time will only tell if studio bosses jump in with a follow-up. A decent hit at the box office though, so if there is another installment about the secretive group of teleporters lets hope they make more of the premise than the first one.

Hayden Christensen plays David Rice, a seemingly normal man living a solitary life until. Not as normal as we think though when we discover he can 'hop' to any place that he wants on the globe. He lives under the radar until he decides on another bank robbery to maintain his lifestyle. It's an action that leads Samuel L Jackson and his henchmen to him. They are the Paladins, the Jumpers' arch enemies. So begins an extended game of cat and mouse across the planet.

A very comic booky, frothy 90 minutes of old school action works well - albeit in a Channel Five US TV show pilot kind of way. we get a decent chunk of back story and character development and Liman, who proved his action chops with Bourne Identity, is able to up the ante with the CGI effects taking over from the from the gunplay and car crash style of Bourne.

Sam Jackson is always helpful to a cast - and a film's fun quota is guaranteed to rise when he hams it up as he does here. So it's just a shame that Christensen appears out to prove his bland performance in the Star Wars movies wasn't a fluke, as here he's giving us another lifeless character in a leading role. This is all the more frustrating when the accomplished and charismatic Jamie Bell (another Jumper) pitches in and fills the screen with a dynamism sadly lacking elsewhere. He really deserved to have been pushed centre stage rather than Christensen.

DVD extras include an audio commentary by Liman and two producers, two featurettes and a little teasing look at further Jumper adventures.