Jumper

Jumper tries to follow in the footsteps of great movies such as The Fugitive and The Matrix. According to RottenTomatoes's 94 critics, it tries but ultimately jumps short of its targets. I tend to agree with them, but my verdict probably isn't as harsh.

I will use The Fugitive to explain why. One famous scene midway through The Fugitive a small showdown between Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) and United States Marshal Samuel Gerard inside a storm drain. Kimble holds his hands up high as a sign of surrender and tells Gerard, "I didn't kill my wife". Gerard replies with an unsympathetic "I don't care". On hearing this, Kimble escapes by jumping off the storm drain and falls a hundred meters into the freezing midnight water. Now imagine how you would feel if the movie ended right there, with promises that the story will unfold in the next part of The Fugitive movie trilogy.

Warning: Spoilers ahead.

That basically describes what happens in Jumper. Haden Christensen stars as David Rice, a young man with an extraordinary ability to "jump" across vast distances in the blink of an eye. Samuel L. Jackson stars as Roland Cox, an uncaring NSA agent slash "Paladin" with high tech toys tasked to bring down Jumpers by any means necessary. Oh yes, Cox also has a personal vendetta to kill all Jumpers. All Jumpers as criminals and Cox often spout the lines "You'll eventually kill someone. It always ends up the same way" before ritualistically unwrapping a large knife and kills the captured jumper in cold blood. And now Cox has caught a new Jumper scent, Christensen's David Rice. Thus begins a relentless chase across the world. This naturally leads to a series of showdowns and narrow escapes at various locales by Rice who ultimately ends the movie with the declaration, "I'm different, I won't kill", and leaves Cox stranded in a mountain cave. End of movie.

Jumper basically sets the stage for a much larger story to come and for all I know, the entire story could be as good as The Fugitive turned out to be. On the other hand, it could end up like The Matrix trilogy. There's no way to know now. All we know now is that the visual effects are weak. The fight sequences essentially comprises of splicing together one second footages of London, Tokyo, the Sphinx, London again, some desert, Chetchnia, some river, Tokyo again, ad nauseum.

So there you have it, Jumper is the first third of a longer story arc which could literally go anywhere, with effects that definitely pale in comparison to The Matrix trilogy. In other words, it is a weak start. And if the Jumper trilogy follows the usual trend of weaker sequels, then it is a movie trilogy not worth watching.