Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.If Abercrombie and Fitch made movies, they would look something like Abduction. They would feature soulless supermodel types recreating hopeless hyper-reality with such slick Photoshopped precision that nothing could be farther from the truth of everyday life. They would also the by-product of an industry that can't differentiate between a fluke and full-fledged deserving star power. Twilight werewolf Taylor Lautner may make the little girls in the demo all frantic with his hunkiness, but he's not an actor. He has zero screen presence and limited thespian gifts. He might look good without a shirt, but so do a lot of nameless, faceless Men's Health placeholders. What he does have is all that Cullen cash to bolster his bankability. So naturally, Tinseltown wants to translate his Tiger Beat 15 minutes into something a little more...lasting. Get while the susceptible are still gullible, so to speak. Sadly, if this lame John Singleton directed dud is the brain trust's answer, Lautner will be part of TruTV's World's Dumbest panel within a week. Instead of launching a potential franchise, this fizzled out steroid stunted adolescent angst fest becomes an illustration of everything we've come to despise about today's Hollywood. It's a dumb, defenseless mess that would need major rewrites and recasting just to be tolerable.
Here is all you need to know about the plot. Lautner is Nathan Price, a over groomed teen with despair in his eyes who suddenly discovers that everything about his current life is a lie. His parents - Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello - are actually plants, people placed in charge of protecting him while his super secret biologicals are busy playing international spy. Of course, a baddie (Michael Nyqvist) from Eastern Europe wants Nathan outed, and when our lead is assigned a school project with the object of his confused affections, Karen (Lily Collins), he uncovers a photo of a missing child that looks just like him. Thus begins the confused cat and mouse, as the CIA (Alfred Molina), an "is she or isn't she" psychiatrist ally (Sigourney Weaver) and plausible plot deniability all conspire to rob eager tweens of their Gap funds.
John Singleton should be ashamed. After a career seen both catering to and trying to avoid the stink of studio stigma, he steps up and delivers one of the biggest steaming piles ever. Being linked to Lautner might be a solid move, next job wise, but for the most part, nothing about Abduction works. We don't care about the high school histrionics, complete with drunken dorkiness and unrequited gulps. We care even less for the espionage, since it comes across as fake, formless, and forced. This is I Am Number Four without the alien angle, a kid as kick butt protagonist that doesn't bother to give either side a reason for being. Lautner may somewhat look the part, all buffed and bruising, but he can't sell the role. Like his work in a certain vampire romance, he's easily dismissed eye candy.
If Singleton and his untried screenwriter Shawn Christensen had just stopped for a moment and realized that they were simply shilling for a fading fad fixture, maybe they would have taken more chances. Perhaps the narrative wouldn't have been so formulaic or the plot twists so obvious. Of course, as long as the post-traumatic Twilighters "get it", nothing else matter. Box office receipts will be counted and sequel possibilities discussed. Gearing your genre to a segment of the demographic usually un-phased by such meat headed spectacle is not stupid. In this case, it's all Abduction has going for it. Without such a purpose, it's just a pointless waste of time.
