Nobody likes David Rice.
Rice (Hayden Christensen) is the focus of "Jumper," which came out Feb 14.
The film follows "Rice Bowl," as the high school bullies call him, from age 15, when he realizes he has the ability to teleport. He soon masters his powers, and before he knows it, he has built an exciting, comfortable life stealing money by teleporting it out of banks.
With his newfound confidence, he goes back to his hometown. He impresses his old high school crush and locks the bully in a bank safe, all without ever needing to open a door.
The more stationary world catches up to him, however, in the form of Roland (Samuel L. Jackson), a supposed NSA agent. He and his handful of religious fanatics represent the cutting-edge Paladins, who have been fighting to make God the only teleporter since the Middle Ages.
The film is a blur of action, riddled with people jumping across the screen and the world, and enriched with beautiful scenery from the locations they visit.
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Watching the movie is a bit like being on vacation yourself. In one scene, Rice is surfing 30-foot swells in Fiji when he falls off his board and onto the head of the Sphinx, where he plans out the rest of his day. Scenes like this represent the same human desire for total freedom that got people hooked on the automobile and make this movie a kind of retreat.
While people can relate to his need to escape, Rice abuses his power so much that he comes across as a bit of a heel.
In one scene, he watches people call out from the tops of their houses, begging to be rescued from the flood below them. But instead of using his powers to save the refugees, he turns off his big-screen TV and vanishes from the living room. Though he seems like a nice enough guy at first, his good qualities stop at the surface.
Rice doesn't change throughout the movie. Even though he seems to realize that robbing a bank was wrong the first time, he never finds a more respectable way to support his expensive lifestyle.
Without Rice to relate to, one looks to the other characters for someone to cheer for. Roland is too crazy to offer any human qualities beyond a vague need for a world that makes sense, and we are left with Rice's jumper friend, Griffin (Jamie Bell). Griffin has grown paranoid from dealing with Roland, and he has spent the last 10 years playing video games in his lair and scheming to kill the Paladins. Bell communicates Griffin's edgy cynicism nicely, and it's too bad he isn't the main character.
Jackson isn't bad as a one-dimensional villain, but that's all his character is. Christensen brings back the angsty, spoiled attitude he gave to teenage Anakin Skywalker in the last two "Star Wars" prequels. Evil fanatics or not, I feel like his character lost the right to mope around when all his dreams came true.
Decent overall acting, beautiful scenery and flashy computer graphics do their part to make this film the spectacle the trailer suggests, but the lack of character development coupled with the weakness of the script and storyline bring this movie back down to mediocre in the blink of an eye.
Grade: B-
