Adapted from novel into screenplay, Jumper stars Hayden Christensen as David Rice, who at the age of 15 discovers that he has the ability to teleport. To escape his drunken father, David decides to leave his town for good for bigger and better things. He starts out robbing banks by “jumping” into bank vaults and stealing all the money. Fast forward eight years, and not only has David honed his teleporting skills, he lives in a super swanky New York apartment, jumping all over the world as whim takes him.

One day David comes home from a night of jumping to find Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) in his apartment trying to kill him. Roland is from a group of jumper killing religious fanatics called Paladins, who are determined to kill all Jumpers for reasons that I’ll get into later.

I had a lot of fun with this movie; say what you want about Hayden Christensen, but I think he played the perfect Jumper. Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) is one of my favorite directors of all time. He makes this action sci-fi type movie extremely real, in the visual sense I mean. The special effects never get in the way; I was never once distracted by the effects, which happens with a lot of CGI movies these days. When someone made a jump, Liman made it look about like you might think it would if teleporting were real. I thought it was great fun watching David jump from place to place all over the world doing things at his will and pleasure. The musical score was also really great; it’s the same composer as in the Bourne Series.

This movie wasn’t without a few problems, however. Samuel L. Jackson’s character was, well, the usual Sam Jackson character -- the arrogant, know-it-all tough guy that’s not afraid of anything. We’ve seen him play this part a hundred times before. Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) plays a lifetime Jumper who David befriends. This character is also pretty much one-note as well. He’s the expert Jumper who’s only purpose is to give us, the audience, exposition to the story. The most noticable problem in the story was why the Paladins want to kill the Jumpers; this really isn’t explained well at all. Sam Jackson’s character makes the same brief statement twice in the movie, but it still doesn’t really explain anything. What makes this extra annoying to me is the the fact that the reason behind the hatred for the Jumpers could have been explained with a few simple lines of dialogue. And yet they still didn’t do it. There was also a brief B story with David’s mom that left me with a few questions, but knowing they are making sequels tides me over because I’m sure it will be explained in the later movies.

But even with the above-mentioned problems, I’m still giving Jumper a good grade. Usually with these types of problems, it would have killed the movie for me. But the action was exciting, the concept was so much fun, and Liman’s directing was so great, I actually watched this one twice.

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