"Jumper" is about a young guy who teleports all over the world. Initially, he does what you or I might do - pops into a bank, robs its safe, and buys a swank New York apartment, where he keeps an elaborate visual log of all the places he's been over the course of eight or so years. The locations are global but the thinking in this movie is small. But eventually, David Rice (Hayden Christensen) returns to Ann Arbor to see Millie (Rachel Bilson), the girl he loved in high school who, it appears, has now shelved her own dreams of wanderlust to do honest work as a barmaid. This movie should be playing on the CW between episodes of "Reaper" and "One Tree Hill."

The script is credited to David S. Goyer ("Batman Begins," the "Blade" movies), Simon Kinberg ("Mr. and Mrs. Smith"), and Jim Uhls ("Fight Club") who've committed various dilutions to Stephen Gould's young-adult books, which were like Salinger sci-fi. Now a story about an abused teen who used his superpowers to escape trauma is now an exceedingly ordinary action movie in search of franchisehood.

"Jumper" doesn't bother exploring the psychological convenience of being able to teleport away from a shout-aholic father (Michael Rooker in a telltale sweaty white undershirt). Instead, it opts for would-be epic adventure. David discovers that his abilities have landed him in the persecuted half of an eons-long war. Sigh. On one side, David's race of teleporters, called Jumpers. On the other, efficient Paladins organized to extinguish them. The movie turns into a long chase between David and Samuel L. Jackson, the Jumper Slayer. (His silver haircut cruelly keeps memories of Sisqó alive.)

A frivolous trip to war-torn Chechnya is a moral gaffe that belongs in a smarter film. Otherwise, there are nicely imagined fights at the Colosseum and in the Sahara. The movie's small details are pretty cool. Jumpers can grab something in one location (a bus, say) and teleport it to another location where it can be used on a Paladin. Whenever a Jumper jumps, rooms shake, papers fly, the air seems a little moist, and a hole remains for someone else to leap through. When he lands (we haven't yet met a she-jumper), the new space is practically destroyed and deluged with, what, afterbirth? (Libraries take a beating in this movie.) Scientific realism aside, the technical care (the effects and fast, smooth editing) that's gone into "Jumper" is exciting.

Working with a very talented crew, the director Doug Liman knows how to keep a movie interesting here and there. He did it with the crummy "Mr. and Mrs. Smith." His "Bourne Identity" was a complete, sustained kinetic work. But Liman appears to be the sort of filmmaker who prefers ballistics and physics to people. The action scenes would be a lot more thrilling if we cared about the characters or the actors playing them. (Jamie Bell is an exception as a punk Jumper.)

But what can you do with Hayden Christensen? He's as close as we have to an android actor. It's all a chore for him. He never looks sufficiently scared, impressed, or surprised by any of this - not even the Oedipal twist with Diane Lane or the requirement that he drag the oft-imperiled Bilson from one scene to the next. Her exasperation makes perfect sense. What's with this damsel business? Her indifference to all the science here seems improbable. It's as if Larry Summers approved her part. Bilson had more to do wearing a patriotic bikini on the cover of this month's GQ. And sadly I had more to do reading it.



By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff
 

02/14/2008