Lurking somewhere within the frenetically plotted Jumper is an intriguing conceit. We are invited to believe that certain individuals, at some point in childhood or adolescence, discover a talent for teleportation or “jumping” by finding or creating wormholes that move them anywhere in space but not in time. Over the film’s mercifully brief running time, we learn a lot more about the laws governing the world of the jumper, although many will find these and much of the plot rather woolly.

Our hero is David Rice (the handsome but rather uncharismatic Hayden “Darth Vader” Christensen), a man who discovers his weird talent as the opening credits start to roll and, by the time that the name of director Doug Swingers Liman appears, has become a faintly bored multi-millionaire. There’s some potential in the idea of a superhero suffering from the ennui of the omnipotent, but sadly a similar ennui afflicts the script itself. The writer, David S. Goyer, has some early fun with the notion of a character who can go anywhere he chooses and do almost anything, but then the film runs out of decent ideas and relies, unwisely, on the charms of Jamie Bell, who seems to have been encouraged to improvise his entire performance as a grungey fellow jumper. After the modest promise of the first 15 minutes or so, the film quickly becomes tiresome and seems to have been made by and for, as well as to be about, people with ADHD.