David is a Jumper who can teleport himself anywhere in the world, which creates a fun and exciting life. But things turn deadly when David finds himself pursued by a secret organization sworn to kill Jumpers. Forming an uneasy alliance with another Jumper he becomes a player in a war that has been raging for thousands of years.

As preposterous action movies go, Jumper is pleasantly unpretentious and breezily entertaining. A young man named David (Hayden Christensen) discovers he has the power to teleport (or "jump") anywhere he can visualize. After using this power to steal and make a comfortable life for himself, he pursues the girl he longed for in school (Rachel Bilson, The O. C.). But as he does so, another jumper (Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot) and a pack of fanatical jumper-hunters called paladins (led by a white-haired Samuel L. Jackson) crashes into David's freewheeling life. Jumper wastes no time trying to explain how jumping works or delving into the hows and whys of the paladins; this is an alluring fantasy of power directed at a pell-mell pace by Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Go). There's a brief moment when it feels like the movie will bog down in romance and vague gestures towards character development--happily, that's the moment when Bell appears and the whole movie shifts into overdrive. You might wish that Bell and Christensen had swapped roles; Bell has a far more engaging personality, and Christensen's bland good looks might better suit a more aggressive character. Nonetheless, Jumper has oodles of dynamism and nifty visual effects to propel its comic-book storyline forward. A variety of recognizable actors in bit parts (such as Diane Lane and Kristen Stewart, Panic Room) suggest that the filmmakers are laying the groundwork for sequels. Based on a critically-acclaimed science-fiction novel by Steven Gould. --Bret Fetzer

Beyond Jumper

More from Steven Gould

The Jumper Soundtrack

More from Fox

Stills from Jumper

• Hayden Christensen
• Diane Lane
• Jamie Bell
• Samuel L. Jackson
• Jesse James

• PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

• Label - 20th Century Fox
• Binding - DVD