Jumper is the film adaptation of the 1992 book of the same name, which I admit, I hadn’t actually heard of until the film showed up. David Rice (Hayden Christensen) is a ‘jumper’; that is, a special type of human whom has the ability to jump anywhere in the world, simply by thinking where they want to go. Of course, such abilities do not go unnoticed; a religious organization of sorts called the Paladins has been established, with the sole intention of killing jumpers. One paladin intent on killing David (Samuel L. Jackson) tracks him to the farthest reaches of the globe. Fortunately for David, he has the reluctant help of fellow jumper Griffin (Jamie Bell) to stay one step ahead of the paladins. Critically mauled upon release earlier this year, I had fairly low expectations for the film. However, even though it’s a slightly convoluted plot, there is a pretty good film in here, with very good performances from Jamie Bell, and the adorable love interest Millie, played by Rachel Bilson. While the intention from the outset was to produce a trilogy of films, the lowered box office take, not helped by the seeming desire of Fox to bury the film with little awareness before release, means that there may not be further sequels. It very well could be a case of waiting to see what the buzz of the home video release may do for the film before anything is decided.
Video
Jumper is presented in the widescreen scope aspect ratio of 2.35:1. The movie was partially filmed with traditional 35mm cameras and with 2k resolution Red One digital cameras; yet you wouldn’t know the difference. Jumper is as clean as a whistle throughout. I noticed nary a hint of film artifacts, film to video artifacts, or any other film or video to film issue. The colors were bright and bold, with a spectrum that was not only easy on the eyes but proved to be great demo material too. Sharpness was spot on and extremely detailed throughout. Being a brand new digital intermediate, Fox didn’t need to resolve to using edge enhancement, or the new enemy for Blu-ray purists; DNR or digital noise reduction. A spectacular-looking release from Fox. Top marks in this category indeed.
Audio
The main audio track here is an English DTS HD Master Audio track, at 24 bits. Matching perfectly the stellar video, is a great audio track. It’s as bustling and alive as the film dictates, with a very bombastic surround presence. Whilst the track is a little more subdued for slower, talky sections, the soundtrack well and truly kicks into gear when needed for the numerous action sequences. Overall, a great companion to the fantastic video track.
Extras
Fox has thrown quite a few extras in, but it’s not quantity over quality at all. Let’s take a look.First up is the audio commentary by Doug Liman, Simon Kinberg and Lucas Foster. It’s instantly evident that all put their heart and souls into the movie, especially Liman, which makes me feel slightly bad for the uneven final product. All participants talk at length at the longer the normal genesis of the film, and the constraints they had to work to.Next up is the ‘Jumping around the World’ – Picture in Picture commentary. Essentially this serves as a small image in the lower left hand corner of the screen dishing out behind the scenes segments, along with GPS like info. A nice little feature, but ultimately dispensable.’Doug Limans’ Jumper: Uncensored’ is the main behind the scenes documentary, and it’s meatier than most, with much condensed into its 35 minute runtime. The ‘uncensored’ part is mostly apt; it goes into a lot of detail with issues that go into making a big budget film and the compromises when things don’t go to plan.A bunch of featurettes are included in the next section, which deal with smaller sections of the making of the film and are rather self explanatory. ‘Jumping around the world’, ‘Making an actor jump’ and ‘Jumping from novel to film’. Most run around 10 minutes apiece. The animated graphic novel is a nice touch, which provides a little more detail to the main character, David. Much went into establishing backstories for all characters, which was mostly missed during the action in the film. So while what we have is only very basically animated, it goes a fair distance in helping to explain the character.Finally we have a bunch of deleted scenes; all are dialogue pieces, none are action. Running at only nine minutes, the film itself wouldn’t have suffered from being excluded, but that said, doesn’t really suffer for its exclusion either.