movie review
Abduction
Post-Twilight film disappoints
When I first heard about Abduction, I thought, oh cool, this will be a great vehicle for Taylor Lautner to move beyond his Jacob Black character in Twilight. He’s adorable and hunky and definitely has the physical prowess necessary for an action-thriller. Unfortunately, adorable and hunky only go so far when you can’t conjure up the emotions required to headline a movie. I felt like I was watching Jacob Black in a different movie.
I’m not saying that Lautner can’t develop his acting skills as he gets older – he’s only 19, for gosh sakes – but at the moment, he doesn’t have a whole lot of range beyond what he’s displayed in Twilight. And because this movie is an action-thriller that’s rated PG-13, it’s not a good draw for all the tween girls who adored him as Jacob the lovelorn werewolf.
In Abduction, he plays Nathan, a high schooler with a good home life, loving parents, and a group of close friends. But he’s always felt out of place – like he’s living someone else’s life. He learns just how true that feeling is when he and teenage neighbor Karen (Lily Collins) are paired up to research a school sociology project about missing children.
They discover Nathan’s picture on a missing persons Web site – or rather, his eerie likeness on a digitally-enhanced photo of a missing child and what they’d look like today. Needless to say, he’s a little freaked out and contacts the site’s chatline to get some answers. What he doesn’t realize is that the site was created as bait by shady characters who’ve been searching for him for years.
Before Nathan can confront his parents (Maria Bello and Jason Isaacs), hit men strike the house, sending Nathan and Karen on the run. Nathan’s therapist (Sigourney Weaver) advises them not to trust the CIA, but leaves them on their own to evade both the government and international operatives chasing them.
It all sounds pretty entertaining, right? You’ve got a mysterious storyline, good action scenes, the possibility of a sequel, and an impressive cast of supporting players—not only the aforementioned, but also Victor Slezak, Dermot Mulroney, Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist (whom American audiences got to know in the original The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo), and Alfred Molina, who plays a questionable CIA agent.
Add in a cool soundtrack with tunes by Train, Lenny Kravitz, Cobra Starship, Andrew Allen and Oh Land, and the fact that it’s directed by John Singleton – no slouch in the moody action-thriller department, having directed such films as Four Brothers, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Boyz n the Hood —and you’d think this would be a slam-dunk at the box office.
But in addition to Lautner’s one-note performance (he’d be a little more broken up about seeing his parents gunned down in cold blood), the script doesn’t give him much leeway and he has zero chemistry with Collins.
Still, I’m not counting Lautner out. I think he has the dedication and skill to make it as an actor, but for now, he’s better off in an ensemble movie a la Valentine’s Day or as a supporting character to any of the acting vets in Abduction.
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