Review of Jumper (2008) by Steve H — 09 Jul 2011

This is a film that screams, begs, and pleads for a sequel. The unfortunate thing is that if this movie does have its sequel greenlit, there will be so much unanswered and unexplored and thrown away by this first movie that it may just become the biggest waste of film making.

..ever.As a concept, this works. Think of it as "What would a selfish Superman/Spiderman/X-Man do?" and you get the idea of this movie. Believe it or not, not every human wants to save the world, and it makes sense that not every person with superpowers would want to either.

How the film uses this concept and injects it with religious/moral objections to people with superpowers is intriguing. Unfortunately Christensen can't act, Bell is never properly explained enough to connect to, and the rest of the cast (Hulce, Rooker, Lane,.

..) is so overbilled that their inclusion was either pure networking, intentional attempt to make these characters feel like part of a bigger world, or an allusion to a sequel. The final cameo in the film by Kristen Stewart screams the loudest for the latter.

Jackson did absorb his character respectably though and created a religious fanatic that will rival anything Dan Brown could have dreamed up.I made an early judgment of the Bourne trilogy and had to eat my words, so I will wait a few years on this one, but as a stand-alone film this was intricately produced and created, intriguingly executed, awesomely special effected, weakly written, and mistakenly casted.