Only after he falls through ice into a river and, instead of drowning, finds himself dripping wet in the stacks of a public library does David realize he can teleport to anywhere he can imagine.
(I hear your question: He's hypothermic, and imagining library stacks? Well, give the kid a break. Maybe they keep them really warm.)
Anyway, Davis is a "jumper," and though he doesn't yet realize it, there are plenty of other folks just like him.
Alas for him, there are also looming threats: "Paladins" who immobilize jumpers with electric currents before stabbing them, and screenwriters who immobilize movie concepts with lame writing before shooting them.
The plot is more or less incoherent, with travelogue footage digitally altered to put David atop a pyramid one moment and astride a glacier the next. And it's not particularly clarified by either the screenplay — a phrase in Chinese leads to scenes in Tokyo — or Doug Liman's direction, which amounts to a frenetic primer on jump-cutting.
I suppose if you're going to cast the blankly handsome Hayden Christensen as your lead, it makes sense to make the character a cipher. Alas, the drawback is that there's no reason to care what happens to him — a fact that hasn't kept the filmmakers from suggesting unending sequels in their finale.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
