JUMP

JUMP1
Nicola Burley plays the highly strung Greta in Kieron Walsh’s JUMP

There’s a lot happening on New Year’s Eve in Derry, Northern Ireland. Against the backdrop of a city girding its loins for a night of revelry, a crook’s safe is robbed and a suicidal girl (Greta, played by Nichola Burley) is talked down from a bridge by a bloody and battered young bloke (Pearce, played by Martin McCann) with a gift for witty, forthright banter. The two quickly become enchanted with each other and devise an audacious plan.

 A love story and a heist. All in one film! What could possibly be better?

 An awful lot as it turns out.

Despite a promising and beautifully shot beginning, much of the quick-fire dialogue rapidly becomes irritating. Then the sequence of events becomes totally and utterly disjointed. Things happen both before and after they’ve actually happened. On purpose. In better hands it could be arty in a good way; here, it just seems rather pointless.

 The love story and the heist intersect, as it’s Pearce who has earlier – or later, given the film’s predilection for time-shifting – robbed the safe containing the ill-gotten gains of the mobster who also happens to be Greta’s father (the paunchy Frank Feeney, played Lalor Roddy, who’s gone-to-seed demeanour hides a nasty streak).

JUMP, directed by Kieron Walsh, was apparently a huge hit at the Toronto International Film Festival and was awarded the Bridging the Borders Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. However the “fast-paced tale of revenge, star-crossed love and robbery” (according to the blurb) left this reviewer cold.

JUMP is playing in Sydney (and other Australian cities including Canberra) as part of the British Film Festival. JUMP has one more screening at the British Film Festival screenings on Sunday 1st December.