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Is it worth $10? No
On page, “Abduction” has all of the elements of an on the run suspense thriller. On screen, however, it’s so unintentionally funny that it almost parodies itself.
In “Abduction,” Taylor Lautner plays Nathan Price. He’s living the basically normal life of the American teenager: going to class, hanging with his friends at parties, playing sports, and longing after his dream girl. In this case, his dream girl is literally the girl next door—or across the street to be exact—whose name Karen (Lily Collins).
As luck would have it, Nathan and Karen get paired up to do a sociology project together. The topic they choose is missing children, and one night while working together and sending numerous links to each other’s lap tops, they discover Nathan on an abducted children Web site. This leads him to ask the next logical questions, which are: Who are my real parents? And also, Who are Mara (Maria Bello) and Kevin (Jason Isaacs), the people who have raised me for the past 15 years?
Unfortunately, he doesn’t get a chance to hear the explanation from them. Before anyone knows it, international baddie Nikola Kozlow (Michael Nyqvist) is on the hunt for Nathan and sends two henchmen to grab him. Mara and Kevin are able to fight them off and send Nathan off to safety—with Karen by his side—but it costs them their lives.
The fight sequence with Mara, as well as one later on that involves Nathan and takes place on a train, were so absurd that I couldn’t help giggling at them. Am I really supposed to believe that Mara can fight off two men who are bigger, stronger, and just as well trained? I can’t. And adding to the hilarity is one moment in the fight where she kicks one of her attackers while he’s on the ground, and asks with a very strained voice, “Who are you?!” I couldn’t help but think that if she didn’t try to knock him out, he might be able to tell her. It reminded me of the scene in “The Big Lebowski” where baddies stick the Dude’s head in a toilet and ask, “Where’s the money, Lebowski?” The Dude’s reply: “Down there somewhere, let me take another look.” The fight with Mara played on that level.
As did the one on the train. It is established early on that Kevin taught Nathan hand to hand fighting skills at an early age. The fight itself wasn’t the funny thing about this one—except for the way Lautner played hurting his hand while punching a baddie in the face—so much as the destruction was funny. Nathan and the bad guy crash through the walls of two or three train compartments in what is supposed to be a big, knock down, drag out fight, but it’s too over the top to being taken as seriously as it wants to be taken. It would have been much more intense to have them fight in the tiny, enclosed compartment, rather than crashing through walls, then getting up and continuing like nothing happened. And it’s a good thing those other compartments weren’t occupied.
As if all of this wasn’t enough, they are also being chased by the CIA, led by agent Burton (Alfred Molina). Burton also has the thankless task of being the one with all of the answers, so the film comes to a halt at around the mid-way point so Nathan can get the questions about his past answered and Burton can explain the confusing plot to him—and by extension us in the audience—so we can try to make sense out of all of the mess with who is chasing who and why.
To the credit of “Abduction,” it does all actually make sense by the end. The final set piece takes place at the baseball stadium in Pittsburgh, and the action there has an element of suspense to it that had previously been lacking. If only the previous 90 minutes were as good as the last 15, the film would be worth seeing.
As for Lautner, this is his first time in a lead role away from the “Twilght” films. He has a good physical presence and promise as an actor, but at the moment he’s too baby faced and high voiced to successfully pull off some of the tough guy moments this movie calls upon him to perform. He’s not particularly intimidating, and it's kind of funny to see him try to act tough. But I will continue to watch him grow as an actor, and a person, and I’d like to see him in a similar role when he has some lines on his face, some hair on his chest, and some deepness in his voice. That’s when I’ll stop giggling—and start believing.
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