The BAMF-er in question is David Rice (Max Thieriot), who discovers his astounding "wild talent" as a mopey, lovelorn teenager when he gives a snow globe to his unrequited high school crush, Millie Harris (AnnaSophia Robb). When a typical jerkwad bully takes the present from her and tosses it onto the frozen surface of a nearby lake, David foolishly makes his way onto the ice in an attempt to retrieve it, despite Mille's attempts to prevent him from risking himself for something so inconsequential. David manages to snag the snowglobe...then the ice below his feet cracks and gives way, plunging him into the freezing water beneath. Shocked, struggling against the current, David suddenly finds himself lying on a hard surface, coughing icy water from his lungs. To his astonishment, he finds himself in the local library, dripping wet, shivering, and completely nonplussed. What the hell...?!

David soon comes to realize that he has the ability to teleport his body from one location to another (leaving a shimmery, mirage-like "wake" behind him). He quickly learns how to harness his newfound ability, practicing in the park before moving onto longer and more elaborate jaunts. Finally, fed up with his alcoholic father (Michael Rooker) and the mother (Diane Lane) who left him as a young boy, David makes the decision to use his powers to get out of Dodge. He moves away, takes a dingy apartment in the city...and starts casing a local bank. Once he knows where the loot is hidden, he makes his biggest leap of all, teleporting into the securely locked vault and then back to his apartment, carrying heaping sacks full of cash with him. Dude, score!

Jump forward ten years, and now David is a twenty something go-getter played by Hayden "You're not like sand, you're soft and smooth" Christensen. He has a fabulous New York apartment he keeps as a "home base" of sorts, but he's a young man who literally has the entire world at his fingertips. Teleport out to Hawaii and find out that the storm system that was supposed to create those awesome waves moved 100 miles to the South? In a blink of an eye, he's there, baby, surfing those waves before taking a lunch break on top of the Sphinx in Egypt and then popping over to London to chase skirts. Man, is this the life, or what?

But David's carefree existence is about to come under threat. One day he comes home to his apartment to discover Roland (Samuel L. Jackson, sporting the latest in a long line of ludicrous hairstyles) standing at the window. Roland is a "Paladin", a self-appointed guardian who's sworn an oath to rid the world of all "Jumpers" like David. Hey, hold he phone, there are more people out there like me?! That's what David would be thinking if Roland wasn't busting out an electrified billy club and bitch-slapping him with it. Apparently, electricity disrupts a Jumper's ability to teleport. Still, David manages to get free and BAMF to safety, but his identity has been compromised. Roving about to avoid capture by Roland and his Paladin followers, David does what any man on the lam would do....he decides to look up the high school crush he hasn't seen in a decade.

Now portrayed by dewy-eyed OC cutie Rachel Bilson, Millie is currently working as a waitress in a dive-y bar, her youthful ambitions to travel and see the world having fallen by the wayside in the intervening years. David quickly makes her re-acquaintence and suggests a spur-of-the-moment trip to Italy, which she strangely agrees to. After a long plane flight (David not wanting to reveal his powers to her just yet), the two arrive, have PG-13 sex (man, the things you have to do to get into a chick's pants these days, huh?), and sightsee, David using his abilities to unlock the Colosseum from inside. It's there that he crosses paths with Griffin (Jamie Bell, suggesting a baby version of Henry Ian Cusick's Desmond from Lost, brotha), a fellow Jumper who witnessed David during a jaunt to London and who saves his bacon when a pair of Paladin assassins attack the two. Realizing the danger, David sends Millie back on a flight to the U.S. and then chases Griffin across several continents until the two strike a shaky truce to help each other do away with Roland and his Paladin cronies once and for all.

Now, the concept of teleport has a wonderful allure to it, especially considering current prices at the gas pump. Man, who wouldn't want to get to work and back again in the blink of an eye? Who wouldn't want to travel the world without all that tedious and expensive time wasted on airplanes, in cabs, and in hotel rooms? And as an action concept, there's definite gold to be mined here (as the superb opening sequence of the second X-Men movie amply displayed, with fuzzy blue mutant Night Crawler -- played by Alan Cummings -- staging a spectacular, one-man assault on the White House, BAMF-in from one location to another with dizzying accuracy). So director Doug Lima's Jumper has a great concept to flesh out for an intelligent actioner, right?

Well, the problem is that the concept isn't fleshed out in this relentlessly fast-paced, ultimately shallow film. At a ludicrously scant 88 minutes, the film plays like an early screenplay draft that never received the rewrites necessary to make it more than mildly diverting. Character motivations remain fuzzy and poorly-defined. The Paladins have apparently been hunting down and exterminating Jumpers "for thousands of years". Okay, um... why?  Roland at one point justifies his actions by saying "Only God should have the ability to be in all places at once", but that's a pretty thin argument for cold-blooded murder. Millie is used simply as a prop. She meets a guy she hasn't seen in a decade (and who she last saw plunging to his apparent death beneath the surface of a frozen lake, which she bizarrely never mentions), then almost immediately agrees to take a trip to Rome with him (on a barmaid's salary? Pretty expensive whim... ), sleeps with him almost as soon as they arrive (note to guys... save up for a surprise trip to a "romantic" European country in lieu of dinner and a movie, and you're guaranteed to get some bush)... you'd think the girl would be a little less impulsive. And there's David's mysterious mother, who appears out of nowhere about halfway through the movie to break him out of a Rome jailhouse, then vanishes again until a denouement that's a shameless sequel grab.

Not to mention that Bell's character basically murders at least two people trying to get rid of both Jackson and Christensen's characters, teleporting a car and a double-decker bus(!) right on top of them in separate incidents, both of which crash and burn spectacularly (the car gets squished by a tank with the driver apparently still in the driver's seat). This is supposed to be one of the good guys?!

The entire movie feels like a two+ hour rough cut whittled down mercilessly to 88 minutes' worth of incoherent excerpts. Now, some genre movies can benefit from a brisk, economic running time (like Wes Craven's highly enjoyable 85-minute thriller Red Eye), but Jumper brings up so many interesting -- yet frustratingly unexplored -- concepts and questions that it feels more like a television pilot episode than a stand-alone movie. The problem being, you know that there's gonna be another episode of a new TV series next week (unless it's on Fox... ), but shaping a movie so that it feels like an extended trailer for it's own sequel is just bad storytelling (even the first X-Men movie, which also suffered from a too-brief running time and an overabundance of underdeveloped characters, still satisfied as an stand-alone experience more than this).

The visual effects are fun, but the film's mediocre, wet puppy lead performances by Christensen and Bilson and it's hyperactive pacing make this a film that's slick and goes down easy, yet never really satisfies. I'd be game for a director's cut DVD down the road, but as it currently stands, Jumper just doesn't cut the mustard.

Presentation
New Movie usually equals Good Transfer, and the anamorphic, 2:35.1 transfer of Jumper doesn't disappoint, with excellent detail and color. The soundtrack, in both Dolby Digital and DTS options (as well as Spanish & French), also sounds great, with teleportation whooshes and body blows blending nicely with John Powell's lively, propulsive orchestral/electronic score.

Extras
An audio commentary during the feature presents thoughts from writer/director Doug Liman, producer/co-writer Simon Kinberg, and producer Lucas Foster. Like the movie itself, it's brisk and enjoyable, yet it contains so much information of earlier drafts of the screenplay that one wishes that film were made instead. Liman also attempts to justify the film's short running time by saying that, like it's lead character jumping over the "boring" parts of life, the movie should follow in the same style, but it's a pretty thin argument. There are also several featurettes on this 2-disc set (although my "special screening copy" did not include that second disc, even though the second disc supposedly only contains one of those "digital copy" deals so you can download a portable version of the movie to your laptop or whatever. Wheeee....), starting off with Jumpstart: David's Story (8:01), a cheesy "animated graphic novel" that fleshes out David's attempts to learn who his grandparents were. Would have been nice to have this sort of character development in the actual movie.

Next is the most interesting of the bunch, Doug Liman's Jumper: Uncensored (35:31), a freewheeling making-of with little in the way of EPK fluff, detailing how Liman managed to broker a deal to be one of the very few filmmakers allowed to film within the Colosseum (albiet with the most action-y moments replicated on a sound stage), how the roles of David and Millie were re-cast early in the production (shame none of that footage with the original actors was included here), detailing how to flip over a double-decker bus, and other fly-on-the-wall goodies. Jumping Around The World (10:54) showcases the crew and cast leaping from one continent to another to add verisimilitude to the film, often shooting on busy streets in Tokyo and New York with only the actors and a single steadicam operator to get a better sense of realism. Making An Actor Jump (7:35) looks at the film's nifty special effects. Jumping From Novel To Film: The Past, Present & Future Of Jumper (8:07) looks at how Liman and his screenwriters adapted Steven Gould's young-adult novel (mostly by throwing out everything but the premise and character names) for the screen, and how they planned ahead in case the film inspires a franchise. Deleted Scenes (11:12 total) is the menu I was most looking forward to, hoping that the character development missing from the film might be found therein, and while there are some nice beats that would have helped the film, there's also not enough of them. They consist of:

1. "Inadvertent Jumps" (David tries falling asleep, only finding himself involuntarily jumping back to his room in his childhood home, eventually forcing him to see a psychiatrist)
2. "Alternate Roland Intro" (a nice bit with Roland discussing his career choice with his son, giving him a little more sympathy)
3. "Tokyo & The Machine" (An odd bit with a gaggle of Tokyo scientists experimenting with a machine to teleport mice from one location to another, with Roland telling them via phone to "keep me informed". The hell...?)
4. "Taxi To Airport - Rome" (a clever bit with David bundling Millie into a cab, only to have her complain that her luggage in still in their hotel room, causing David to improvise a clever solution)
5. "Epilogue - War" (tells us what the hell happens to Griffin when David leaves him)

Previz: Future Concepts (4:29) offers some nifty, video game cut scene-style animatics (accompanied by selections from John Powell's score) for action scenes that appear to either have been excised from the finished movie, or else are being saved for the film's sequels (if they ever get made). Lastly, there's a Trailers menu with ads for the long-delayed seventh season of 24 (0:32) and There Is No Box: F/X Promo (1:07). Plus, before the main menu loads up, there's a 5:42 trailer package with ads for Live Free Or Die Hard, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening, and the three films in the Behind Enemy Lines "trilogy".

Bottom Line
The film may as well have been titled Renter, as it's not really worth owning. It's modestly zippy fun as it unspools, yet leaves little behind aside from some nifty visuals and Bell's enjoyable supporting performance.