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March 8, 2008
Under the Peg - Jump In, It's Worth It
Blink and you're in London, sneeze and show up in France, pop out of any bar fight and continue your meal in a different continent, and never have to wait in line at the airport again. Between you and me, I'd kill for that ability, but a small group of people are born with it due to a genetic anomaly, and that's the basis for Jumper.
The story starts with the main character giving us a run through of his day. Breakfast in France, followed by a stop in Italy, flirting with a woman in Prague and rounding the morning off with lunch on top of the Sphynx. David (Hayden Christensen) has had the ability to teleport since he was fifteen. A local bully caused him to fall into a frozen river, and in his panic he teleported to the Ann Arbor Public Library. Since then he's been jumping all over. He's living the high life in New York when a man named Roland (Samuel L. Jackson) shows up in his apartment and tries to kill him. David soon finds out he's in the middle of a war between the Paladins and the Jumpers. The Paladins believe the Jumpers' ability to teleport is an abomination against God and must be exterminated. What follows is a deadly game of cat and mouse that spans the entire globe.
If you're going to make a Sci-Fi movie, you're going to need good special effects. Thankfully, the people who made this movie remembered that. They also remembered that the Jumpers are a group in hiding, so they had to balance the impressive flashiness with a subtlety that allows a person to flash out of existence without setting everyone around him on high alert.
I found the personalities of the characters to be very believable: Roland acts just the way I expect a man of his belief system to act, David acts just the way most people would if they suddenly had the ability to teleport on a whim. The fight scenes are nothing sort of spectacular, and even though the movie is quite violent, there isn't much blood. There are, however, plenty of heavy impacts, and several "Oh that's gotta hurt" moments.
Overall: Come for the special effects, stay for the action, come back again for the music.
Score: 9 pegs out of Ten.
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