Abduction (2011)

Trailer

2 pouty shark faces out of 5.

I`m not ashamed to admit I`ve followed the Twilight series with the same zeal as a tween girl and so I`m equally unashamed to review this attempt at establishing Taylor "Guesswhatmyshirtisoffagain" Lautner as a serious actor.

Abduction is pretty fun. If you are looking for some fast action, hand-to-hand combat and lots of chasing, look no further. However, if you are looking to be impressed by Lautner`s emotional range, you might want to go back to Twilight where at least he becomes a wolf when he`s angry. In Abduction, he just looks at stuff off camera for a few seconds whenever needs to express something unspoken. I guess it must work for people whose abs are insured.

It`s an entertaining story involving witness-protection-programesque secrets, CIA handlers and one or two pretty foreseeable twists that still deliver despite their written-for-cromagnon set-ups. Lautner honestly doesn`t have his shirt off as much in this movie, although it can be argued that a few more shirt-changing scenes couldn`t have hurt the overall aesthetic of the movie. After all, he was on the run a lot and if we`re following Harrison`s Fugitive rules, then we should have had a few more ab-revealing costume changes.

I will say that Lautner definitely worked very hard on the physical aspects of this movie. Towards the end, he gets the chance to do some of his own parkour-ish stunts and pulls them off well. Those are when he really shines I think. But when asked to portray some of the more $5 emotions like "sadness leading to vengeance" or "beat down but goal-oriented", I just don`t think he pulls it off. He doesn`t seem like much of a thinker so when he comes up with this well-thought-out plan to bait and trap the enemy, it`s pretty unbelieveable that he considered such details.

I can`t believe I almost forgot this one... Lautner`s character is seeing a therapist played by Sigourney Weaver. I was unimpressed. He has this little speech during one of their sessions that`s the classic "I feel so different from everyone else. Like I just don`t fit in. I don`t know what`s wrong with me..." bullshit we`d expect to hear from characters played by Jesse Eisenberg. But hearing that kind of line from Lautner is like hearing NorthFace/Ugg-wearing white girls complain about hair straightening products. Shut up already.

You could waste your time in worse ways than seeing this movie. Just be ready for your girlfriend`s post movie request to join a gym, stop playing WoW so much and to sign up for kickboxing with her on Wednesday nights from 7 to 9.

- Bill