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Jumper
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Pat Pilon (18th June 2008). |
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The Film
 It is the demand (and some would consider the advantage) of every science-fiction movie ever made that the audience should suspend some of their brain power. The suspension of disbelief is a must in this genre, and 'Jumper' probably demands more than what is appropriate, making the movie somewhat uneven and slightly incoherent. Jumpers are people that can teleport themselves to wherever they can either see or can remember. When they jump, they leave a 'jump scar', in which, say, another jumper can jump through to end up in the same spot as the first jumper, wherever he may go. In the movie, regular people can get through this scar as well, as long as it doesn't 'heal' up and close, which takes about 15-20 seconds, according to a few scenes. Now, two jumpers are in a car, driving quickly in Tokyo, jumping here and there to get out of traffic, presumably leaving scars in the middle of the road. The other cars driving around, however, don't follow through the scars, making me wonder why the scars only appear when it means that two jumpers can chase each other. Likewise, the Paladins – the people trying to kill jumpers – have this gizmo that can create and hold wormholes, or so someone explains vaguely, making me wonder why these people use planes and cars. Couldn't they just jump from place to place? There are also more unanswered questions like 'why the hell did you only create one of these gizmos?, but I'll leave those for you guys to answer yourselves. As for the rest of the movie, the plot concerns jumper David Rice (Hayden Christensen) and his flight, trying to escape from the Paladins, led by the ultimate bad-ass Roland (Samuel L. Jackson). He also meets up with his high school crush Millie (Rachel Bilson) and Griffin (Jamie Bell), a jumper tracking other jumpers. The romance between David and Millie is simple, but effective enough, but the relationship between David and Griffin is a lot more interesting. They have differing opinions on jumping from place to place and on living their lives, so it makes their repartee pretty fun. Jamie Bell has some nice fun with his dialogue, as well. It's just a shame the other characters aren't as lively as his. Director Doug Liman's movies always have a tremendous amount of energy. Starting with 'Swingers', then with 'Go' and especially with 'The Bourne Identity', his movies have a tremendous level of excitement, created by the editing and the music. 'Jumper' is really no different. However strange, when the action start, it's fast and furious, with a nice intensity. The editing is razor-sharp, and creates some great energy. With a little bit more thought, the movie could be better. Too many rules often bog down the logic and this is one of those cases. The rules that are introduced bring holes along with them, and with those holes comes bad logic. The technical aspects of the movie are very nice, though, and the action is pretty nifty to watch. If you turn off your brain, this is a very enjoyable movie, but then again this is the kind of plot that demands some brain power, because without using your grey matter, nothing in this movie will make sense.
Video
2.35:1 widescreen, using the MPEG-4/AVC codec. The picture is very nice from start to finish. It's great, in fact. The skin tones are very nice, though, on my setup, looked a bit pale at times. However, the rest of the colours are great, and show no flickering or any kind of artifacting. The contrast is great and shows great detail, while keeping a nice three-dimensional image. I did notice a little edge enhancement in one or two scenes, though. The darker scenes show great shadow detail, while white are clear without showing bloom (unless wanted, of course). There doesn't seem to be any grain, though the picture doesn't look too soft. It's a strong transfer.
Audio
With Fox, you'll find an English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, and it's very nice. Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1 dubs are also available. The lossless track is very well mixed and shows very good volume levels, adding a nice touch of realism to an otherwise rather unrealistic movie. The little rocks thrown against Millie's window near the start of the movie are very soft compared to the crashing bus and van later on. The surround speakers are always filled with ambiance, whether it be voices or city sounds or music. Positions are pretty accurate with a wide front stage. The subwoofer gets a nice workout when the action starts, providing a very deep end. The dialogue is always clear throughout everything, even when the score swells up, enveloping your living room. It's a thoroughly enjoyable aural experience. English, Spanish, Cantonese, Korean and Mandarin subtitles are here.
Extras
Fox was very nice with this disc, packing it in with tons of features. Starting things off is the audio commentary by producer Lucas Foster, director Doug Liman and producer/co-writer Simon Kinberg. This trio provide a very nice commentary to the movie. They talk ad infinitum about David Rice, his motivations and his character from end to end. They seem to be justifying their decisions, which is a bit strange. In any case, they mostly talk about the decisions they made about the characters, the story and the entire movie. They don't discuss things that are explained in the featurettes, which is nice. They talk about ideas and script bits that didn't make it into the movie. As a nice companion to this (though they can't be played together) is the Jumping Through the World bonus feature. There are two versions of this thing. If you have a Bonus View (profile 1.1) player, you can see a picture-in-picture version of the extra, but if you don't have one, you can see a branching version of the extra, somewhat like 'Déjà Vu'. I watched the picture-in-picture version and it has a nice amount of additions, giving you a tremendous amount of information. In each branch, you get: the location in the movie, the actual location and basic information about that spot, in addition to narration and behind the scenes footage for whatever you're seeing. For example, when David is on the Sphinx, you see information about Egypt, like area, population and currency, as well as some bits of history. In all, there are 11 branches/pip views, about David Rice learning to jump, the Empire State Building, the Big Ben set, the Sphinx, David's Manhattan apartment, the Coliseum, Tokyo, Griffin's lair, the Jumper fight, Millie's apartment and the last scene. There's a small animated short here called Jumpstart: David's Story (8:07). Though it's supposed to be about David, I don't see how it can be his start, because it doesn't make sense. It has David trying to figure out about his mother. It's a pretty nice short. There's also a documentary, Doug Liman's Jumper: Uncensored (35:34). The camera follows the cast and crew as they film in the various cities, while Mr. Liman says everything's going great and the producer says everything's going over-budget and over-schedule. All the main actors have both talking-head interviews and on-set comments to give. It's a pretty interesting look at the movie. The Making an Actor Jump featurette (7:36) is next. It's all about the jumping effects. Mr. Liman talks about how he came up with the jumping effects. He started out simply in his office and went from there. The visual effects guys talk about how the fights were made, with up to 5 body doubles. You see some very nice behind the scenes footage and the actors goofing off when they can. Jumping from Novel to Film: The Past, Present and Future of 'Jumper' (8:08) is also here. In this featurette, you hear about how the book was taken, modified and flexed into the final film. Mr. Liman talks about the first screenplays and how they were adjusted to make the movie he wanted. The writer talks about his book, what it means and where it came from. He also says what he thinks about the movie. Next are six Deleted Scenes. None of them add too much. The first scene is rather unnecessary, though would have been interesting at the very beginning of his discovering his ability, but that would have added too much time to the movie. The third one explains one of my complaints, but is pretty unnecessary. The fifth one has a nice little gag, but there are already enough of these gags in the movie as it is. The scenes are: 'Inadvertent Jumps' (2:47), 'Alternate Roland Intro' (1:55), 'Tokyo and the Machine' (1:10), 'David Hides from Roland' (3:36), 'Taxi to Airport – Rome' (1:19) and 'Epilogue War' (0:22). Some Previs: Future Concepts (4:34) also find themselves here. If 'Jumper' comes out with an all-out action sequel, the scenes in here would be absolutely kick-ass. These are pretty intense action sequences that didn't even come close to making it in the movie, but they're very nice to watch. It's like a very exciting short. The ending is a bit silly, but some of the ideas for the action are top-notch. The disc is also enhanced for D-Boxes, so there's a D-Box Motion Code here if you have one of those nifty chairs. A few Start-Up Trailers start the disc. A 'Jumper'/Hewlett-Packard commercial (1:32), as well as a trailer for 'The Happening' (2:16) and a digital copy ad (1:04) are here. Finally, disc two has a Digital Copy of the film for your Ipod or Zune or whatever.
Overall
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