A Leap of Faith

I had heard of Jumper a long time ago (I don't remember when), and was curious about it. When playing RPGs, teleport was always one of my favorite abilities (not my very favorite, but up there), so that got my attention a bit.

When the movie came out, that finally prodded me to get the book. A while after that (probably between six months and a year), I finally got around to reading it. And recently, Amazon had this 3-pack on sale for about $20, so I got the movie.

Well, I got around to watching the movie last night, and thought I'd talk about it a bit. I did find myself wishing that I'd read the book a bit more recently, so I'd remember a few more specifics, but here's what I remember:

The book was a kind of coming-of-age story of a kid with a nifty, but unexplained, power. He starts out lifting a lot of cash from a bank vault, and uses that to get himself started on a real life. Eventually, he even starts helping out rid the world of terrorists.

The movie keeps the weird power and the cash from bank vault, but loses most everything else. This Davy is a completely selfish loner who uses his power for self-gratification and nothing else. And he comes to be chased by a secretive organization that wants to kill him purely because of what he can do. And, oh yeah, his mother is part of that organization, which is why she disappeared when he was five.

Now, essentially the entire story is him trying to stay alive against this cabal while trying to win over the girl he's liked since he was around five.

While it's certainly action-packed, and has very nice scenery, it was a pretty forgettable movie. The whole thing just felt... I dunno... contrived, maybe? It doesn't help that the resolution didn't really make any sense. The way he finally got away from Samuel L Jackson (and minions) didn't work. Electricity pulsing through him kept him from being able to teleport, until that scene, when it suddenly didn't. About the only good thing about it was the other jumper, Griffin, who was pretty funny.

But I do think I'll go back and re-read the novel (not in the next few months, unfortunately), and maybe the sequel as well. And maybe Griffin's backstory, as well. We'll see about that.