Abduction? Review

After Nathan Harper finds a picture that oddly resembles himself online, he begins to ask questions. With in a day there are people attacking his house, trying to catch him. Nathan does not know who he can trust, so he goes off on the run, trying to remain hidden at every turn, all the while trying to figure exactly what is going.

Abduction was released earlier in the fall, and was supposed to be Lautner’s expose; he was supposed to come alive as the next big action star. If that was his sole intention, he should have chosen a script with at least a shred of credibility, and not just a typical action movie with the same old stunts seen hundreds of times. Lautners Jacob Black may have gained him a few supporters, as he is one of the few who has given off a worthy of mention performance in the Twilight saga. Lautner has the look, at 19 he is physically fit for any role. He can climb walls, kick, and punch and use all the martial arts moves he chooses. If anything in this film Lautner gets credit for at least kicking ass in the action scenes.

What Abduction suffers from is lack of integrity. It tries to build the romance between Nathan and the girl across the street, but it is just not necessary for the plot line at all. The character of Karen played atrociously by Lily Collins (daughter of drummer Phil Collins) had no reason to be in the film at all. Karen was simply used to add sexual tension and climax to a scene where the make out heavily on a train. Why do you they have these sexually charged young adults stopping to have a little romance and then suddenly just stop awkwardly to say “we should get food”? The reason is the PG-13 rating, it enables kissing and flirting, but very little else can be shown. PG-13 also brings down the limit of using the F-bomb to just one use.

Very little of Abduction is worthy of redemption. There are a few scenes that maybe could have used a touch of better writing, or at least an edit of the initial draft. Abduction was a film that got the green light because of the action. Everything else is a dull attempt to be better then what it is. All the dialogue is unpleasant to sit through, because Lautner hides behind his squished up face, it seemed like he was attempting to show rage. I feel like at times, when Lautner was attempting to sound like a tough 19 year old kid, his voice sounded shrill and child like.

Enough with the baseball stadium scenes, why is that the only public place to meet? Why would you choose such a place, unless you know every little crevice of the place it is probably not a good idea. It is more then likely possible, Nathan Harper would have known a much better public place to manoeuvre around in, a place much easier to plan a grand escape from. Also during the baseball stadium scene, Nathan does what every action movie character does; he meets with the bad guy when he was still ten steps ahead of him.

Lautner may be adored by screaming fan girls young and old all over the world, but that does not change the fact if he wants to remain a star, he must choose films that are worthy of him remaining a star. Perhaps he is still young, drawn to scripts that are a breeze to read, but someday Lautner it would be good to see if you can read a script and play a character that isn’t tough and does not rely on fighting. He is on the way to limiting his own career, because the worse movies you do, the likelihood of getting a quality script sent to you is lower.


4/10