Okay, first things first: Two mini-micro reviews, since I’ve been so neglectful of late. Vantage Point: The whole idea here is that looks deceive, and they were right — the previews made this look like a good movie. And The Other Boleyn Girl — I absolutely love Tudor history, but all I can say about this is kids, don’t use either the film or the book it’s based on as a basis for your history papers, because you’ll flunk.
Okay. Now onto the big score. In 1971, a group of thieves broke into a branch of the famous Lloyd’s Bank of London and robbed not the vault, as one might expect, but the safety deposit boxes. This turned out to be a much better move than robbing the vault, as it turned out — though many were reluctant to report what they’d lost, some estimates put the losses at more than 4 million pounds. That works out today to over $8 milliion US, and that’s not even adjusted for inflation, because I have no idea how to do that. The crime was all over the news for a few days, then disappeared completely. The British government had issued something called a D-order, commanding the media to stop their reporting, and they did. I’m not entirely sure those still work today, but back then they had some clout. But to this day, it isn’t generally known who was behind it or why the government stepped in.
Enter this film, to offer up one very fun theory. According to the script, Princess Margaret, who was apparently quite a wild woman in the 1960’s and 70’s, was the subject of some very racy blackmail photos. The blackmailer (supposedly) was a real-life Black Power leader and wanna-be Malcolm X who called himself Michael X, and used the photos to get immunity for all his varied criminal enterprises. MI-5 wants these photos desperately, of course, but they have to be sneaky about it so as to avoid any scandal or direct ties between them and whatever underhanded methods they have to use to get the pictures.
So they recruit a minor drug dealer named Martine (Saffron Burrows, Troy), to lure in a group of criminals to pull off the robbery. She goes back to some old friends: Terry Leather (Jason Statham, The Transporter), since married and trying to be respectable; and his mates Kevin (Stephen Campbell Moore, Amazing Grace) and Dave (Daniel Mays, Atonement) — not quite so respectable, perhaps. But they’re certainly not bank robbers or any kind of big-league crooks, and you can tell.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between miners and bank robbers these days.

They have a decent plan — they take over the lease of a nearby empty store, and use its basement as a tunnelling point to get them into the bank from below. But they have this thing called a thermic lance (think a sparkler, only a thousand times bigger and hotter) to help them get through all the concrete and steel, and they nearly burn the whole building down while they’re playing with it. They’re noisy, attracting attention from nearby stores, they order food to be delivered while they work, and don’t even bother to wear gloves. Worst of all, they use walkie-talkies to keep in touch with their lookout, forgetting how easy it can be to overhear things on those.
But they succeed, and have a party in the basement, rummaging through all the myriad treasures from the deposit boxes. Their fortunes are made, they think — until they find not only the offending royal photos, but a whole stack of other, equally appalling pictures that a local madam kept there, not to mention a ledger of payoffs to corrupt cops, recorded by pimp and strip-club owner Lew Vogel (David Suchet, of Poirot fame, and I’m officially exhausted with listing past credits).
Here’s where you might need to start taking notes. This is a British film, and they expect people to pay attention, so there’s a lot going on. Aside from MI-5, both the madam and the sinister Vogel want their things back — especially Vogel, who isn’t afraid to use something that I think was some sort of mechanical paint-stripper to get his way, and has half the London police on his payroll besides. Other politicians slowly get pulled in as well, for their various, scandalous reasons, until our intrepid gang of hero-thieves no longer knows which way to turn.
And there’s so much more that happens, I couldn’t even begin to explain it all. But it’s well-done, fast-paced and interesting, though as I said, you do have to pay attention. The characters are great, the sort of odd and off-beat people you might know yourself, and the humor is nice and dry, just the way I like it. So four idols here, and it’s well worth any note-taking you might have to do.

• Long Note Three
  
• Back on Track
  
• Bumbly March
  
• Majestic Hills
  

• Music Box Theme
  
• Organ Filler
  
• Tiny Fugue
  
• Long Note One
  

A Jumper jumps. That’s simple enough. Paladins are regular people who want to kill Jumpers… which is also simple enough, as long as you don’t want to know why, because I can’t tell you. I never manage to get around to reading the novels these movies are based on, it seems, and usually I suspect that’s for the best. This time, though, I have the feeling that if I had read the book, I wouldn’t still be sitting here wondering exactly what all that jumping was really about.
The main character, David Rice, is played by Hayden Christensen, so right there you know you’re in trouble. He still can’t act, but at least he’s finally figured out that he needs roles where all he has to do is look good and not react or emote much. He’s pretty good at that sort of brooding look, and that’s all that’s required in a lot of the scenes here, so the casting isn’t quite as disastrous as it seems. I did occasionally feel sorry for Rachel Bilson as girlfriend Millie, who spends most of her scenes looking at him a little pleadingly, hoping for some sort of feedback on what she’s saying, just so she knows he’s listening.
At 15, David nearly drowns, and in his panic to get out of the water, lands himself in the Ann Arbor Public Library. Strangely, he doesn’t seem to get in any trouble for drenching half the fiction section, and after a bit more experimenting, he decides to go on the run. His mother (Diane Lane, of Untraceable fame, though fortunately for her she has only a tiny little part here) ran off ten years ago, and his father has been stern and distant ever since. So in his teenage angst, he packs up some clothes and some money and heads for New York. The big city being so expensive, though, his cash doesn’t last long, and he has to find other resources. But when all you need to do is once to have seen a particular place to be able to go back there in the blink of an eye, robbing a bank is pretty simple. The next thing you know, he’s literally wallowing in money, in his closet-sized room in a fleabag motel.
Soon he has a fancy apartment, filled with gadgets and toys. It’s sort of like in Big, where the suddenly grown-up Tom Hanks jams his house with all the latest stuff. David hasn’t needed to grow up, so he hasn’t — the toys have just gotten bigger and more expensive. He surfs in Fiji, picks up girls in London, and has a drink on the top of the Sphinx’s head, and never gets jet lag. Then Samuel L. Jackson shows up, and with him the beginning of the end of David’s sweet life.

Maybe it’s the hair, but somehow Samuel just isn’t his usual scary self…

For some reason Samuel has perfectly snow-white hair, which is pretty distracting, but does make him conveniently easy to recognize and describe. He’s apparently the leader of the Paladins, and moonlights on the side for the NSA, CIA, and even the IRS. Whoever these Paladins are supposed to be, they apparently have unlimited funds, endless supplies of fake IDs, and can smack around anyone whose looks they don’t like.
This brings us to the only explanation I could come up with for why the Paladins want to kill the Jumpers — they’re jealous because the Jumpers get to have unlimited funds and push people around, too. One Jumper, Griffin, has started his own one-man crusade to try and stop them, but if he knows why the Paladins started all this, he isn’t telling. All he says on the matter is that they’re fanatics — or maybe phonetics; his English accent sounds a little strained at times. But they are fanatical; at least Samuel as Roland is. We don’t really get to see any other Paladins in action, but he keeps insisting that the Jumpers are abominations.
And so, unfortunately, is the film. Two and a quarter idols is the best I can do, and half an idol is just for the cinematography. It’s a huge, chaotic mess of exotic places and strange sights — fun, dizzying, and almost completely plotless. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fascinating to see an apartment in Michigan catch on fire because of some kid wielding a flamethrower in the middle of the Sahara; and the scenery is gorgeous. The music is good, too, but as a friend of mine once said, if you’re noticing that much, then you would have been better off to stay at home and just buy the soundtrack. So that’s my best suggestion here. It’s about time someone organized a boycott of Hayden Christensen movies anyway… or at least to organize some money for acting lessons.