Abduction review

"You're gettig a glimpse behind the curtain. What we're engaged in here is a polite war. It's not about bullets and bombs, borders or territories. The currency of this war is information. Zeroes and ones, Nathan. Data."

- Alfred Molina "Abduction"

Released in 2011 under the direction of John Singleton and distributed by Lionsgate on a budget of $35 million; "Abduction" is a action thriller vehicle meant to pull magazine model Taylor Lautner out of the Twilight franchise and turn him into an action star. But with a screenplay by Shawn Christensen, the frontman for the band stellastarr*, (I have taken the time to hear some of their music and I have concluded that these guys are the hipster equivalent to Creed and Panic at the Disco) the chances of doing so fell hard. Some hope of this film's success came from the reputation of John Singleton, the man responsible for the critically acclaimed "Boyz n the Hood"as well as the critically panned "2 Fast 2 Furious" and the remake of "Shaft." So with a director who's had more misses than successes, a screenplay by a guy who fronts an annoying indie band nobody gives two f*cks about and an actor whose fame comes solely by his lack of clothing, this movie was BOUND to succeed!!…right? Well, since nobody saw this in theaters, let's give it a watch and determine if it should have deserved better.

Plot: 18 year-old Nathan Harper is a guy who, despite some terrible nightmares seems to have it pretty good, (he has an iMac and a Macbook and a motorcycle) but that all changes when a class assignment with high school crush Karen Murphy (Lily Collins) leads him to discover a website of missing children with his face on the site. Questioning this bizarre occurrence, he calls the site's operator, getting the attention of Serbian terrorists and their leader Nikola Kozlow (Michael Nvqvist) who sends agents to his house where the kill his parents. Escaping from them with Karen, he attempts to contact the police but is intercepted by the CIA as operative Frank Burton (Alfred Molina) tells him he's not safe. Before he can collect his thoughts, his psychiatrist Dr. Geraldine Bennett (Sigourney Weaver) picks him up, telling him that he can't trust anyone as she literally has him hit the gowned running to go find a safe spot but not even bother to give him any information or try to comfort him over the fact that his parents are dead. So now he's on the run to find some answers to questions that he could just willingly ask people but instead, gets none whatsoever, forcing him to waste two hours to lead to an ending that lacks spirit.

Okay, I have to admit, this script is a LOUSY excuse to call a thriller. There's so much here that could be fully explored and fleshed out, but it doesn't take advantage of that. We have a CIA operative who is corrupt CIA agent, why is he corrupt? No explanation other that he just is and he has questionable motives. the best way I can describe it is like you took "The Bourne Identity" took a hacksaw to anything that young people won't even comprehend or understand, replace Matt Damon with a teenager for the young people to try to connect to, then just have two young people hook over all because they have to go on the run together; presto, you've got an easy $50 million! It's not like teenager would want to go see something else, like "Conan the Barbarian," "Contagion," "The Killer Elite," or "Moneyball." The movie ultimately lacks a fully-focused drive to make us, the audience, care to see this teenager find the answers this brat is looking for outside of just "his parents are dead" and instead of setting out to avenge them, he focuses on finding out "who he is" and stuff that Doug Liman managed to flesh out better with his thriller in 2002. Usually, the thriller genre is about withholding information from the audience so that we, the audience, can learn what he learns and are invested. But by the time we reach the ending, we already figured out that the evil guy is behind Nathan's nightmares.

Funny thing is, the first 10 minutes of this movie give the impression that the movie could be something else entirely. The whole bit with Nathan discovering that his parents aren't his real parents, that could have become an interesting drama about a young man making the discovery that he was adopted and he tries to find his true father. That has so much potential and I would totally dig it! I would totally get on board for that idea! But no…instead it becomes an action movie…nice going Lionsgate, ruin a potentially interesting drama and maybe actually get Lautner to go against typecast...

Characters:

Taylor Lautner: What's the most important thing a thriller requires? A central character to lead us through the film to confront his or her problem. This guy clearly can't seem to act his way out of a box unless he's beating up people. The closest he comes to actually doing something without any help is taking on one unnamed Russian/Serbian and in a scene that makes me think they wanted to try and do a homage to "From Russia With Love" only without the exploding briefcase. All joking aside, he is awful, really a dull lifeless, whiny f*ck. I just can't connect with this guy at all, he offers me nothing that I could give a f*ck about. He just mugs his way through the movie and does some kickboxing and parker but 80% of the movie is him mugging and running. 

Lilly Collins: Ironic that early in the film, Sigourney Weaver advised Nathan to just ditch her, while she is just advising that he work alone, I think she was really warning him to get rid of this incompetent bitch because she offers nothing to the narrative but just a cocktease of a sexless sex scene and an excuse for Nathan to confront the evil Siberian terrorist guy. She just whines and complains and reminisces about she and Nathan in 8th grade and why they weren't dating after that, which is stupid. She doesn't really offer anything of value outside of annoyance; you should have taken Sigourney's advice and ditched her when you could have spent more time by yourself exploring yourself and developing your character.

Alfred Molina: Was there some debt he owed to Lionsgate or did he get caught trying to leave Indy in the temple again? As a character, he has more motivation to do the things he does, but he doesn't fare much better than any of the other actors in this film. He just comes off as a creepy pedophile, at least he does to me.

Michael Nyqvist: Whooooooo, I'm the evil eastern-european terrorist guy who killed your parents!!! WHOOOOOOOO SOOOOO EVILLLLLL!!!!!! Yeah, this guy is an okay actor, nothing I can brag about. He's evil and he plays evil well enough, but he lacks depth and appeal. He's just evil because he's a terrorist who wants some files of CIA or whatever. Remember his performance in the Swedish "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" film? Far more fleshed out and memorable a character than in this film.

Sigourney Weaver: She just sprouts exposition and then she's out of the movie until the end. That's all you'll get out of it.

Acting is somewhat competent enough, but nothing really memorable. Not much I can really touch on.

Production: You know, this is a little too standard a thriller. A Suburban house? An Amtrak? A cafe in what looks like the cheap man's Bronx? A baseball stadium? That's really the most interesting the cinematography even gets, practically not even leaving the East Coast, sure they try to go to Nebraska but they don't even meet the guy they're supposed to meet, but since Pennsylvania underwent a tax credit program, Lionsgate took advantage of this, that way, being able to stay under budget. The editing competent to at least show the action scenes, the costumes are nothing to brag about, the soundtrack is mixture of whatever's popular, from Train to Black Stone Cherry, with additional scoring by Edward Shearmur. I wish I could say more, but there really isn't much to say considering that for a thriller involving Serbian terrorists, the film feels very limited to one designation, which, for a conspiracy thriller, you would think it should be more spread out, like, maybe go across the Atlantic Ocean perhaps? Or wait…dang it, I'm thinking too much about "The Bourne Identity" again. 

Bottom Line: After watching this movie, I can see why nobody saw this film. The best way I can describe it is think of "The Bourne Identity" but give away the ending an hour into the movie, make Matt Damon whinier and uninteresting and give the character a weak and barely explored motivation as a reason for him to go through the mystery. This movie is an example of how not to make a thriller; sure, it has the outline of a thriller, but the execution is a poor effort. It's hard to really support the protagonist and learn what he knows when we are given more information than the protagonist is, we come to the conclusions faster than he can, which almost begs the question, if we already know the answers, why are we still following this guy? The acting isn't the worst I've seen, but it ranks up there with Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes," the acting is that bad. One final thing I have to stress, why is this movie called "Abduction?" Nobody getting abducted or kidnapped, so it's really a poor choice in the title and perfect representation for the confused narrative of the movie. There's a lot here that I can at least give the director credit for, but there isn't enough here that I can't recommend a second watch.

Final Rating: 2/5

Until next time, I'll be here stoking the fires for when we burn through celluloid.