Abduction - review

Abduction, or "Ab-duction" would be appropriate thanks to Taylor Lautner's growing McConaughey-esque obsession of taking his shirt off in every film, will undoubtably end up in my Top Ten worst films of the year.
I am coining a phrase in this review, called a "Lau-botomy" which is the cinematic experience of physically feeling your IQ dropping because you are a watching a film so stupid it is making you dumber for having seen it.
I'm all for the odd dumb action movie like Con Air or Fast & Furious 5 but this form of stupid, lazy filmmaking is the exact kind of thing that Empire argued against following audience criticism of their negative review of Transformers 3.
Teenager Nathan Harper (Lautner) feels like a stranger in his own life (and to the profession of acting) and when working on a school assignment with neighbourhood crush Karen, he comes across his picture on a missing person's website. In a flash his life is turned upside down. His "parents are killed" and he is being chased by the CIA and creepy European killers as he tries to uncover his true identity.
Abduction, how terrible are you? Let me count the ways...
Let's start with Taylor "Jac-Abs" Lautner. A young lad who appears to have spent time training at the Joey Tribbiani and Derek Zoolander schools for kids who can't act and do other stuff good.
The photographs below give you an idea of his dramatic range...

"What's my phone number again?"



"Did I leave the gas on?"



"Blue Steel"

"Le Tigre"

"Ferrari"

I can't wait for him to drop Magnum on us...

Then we have Lily Collins who seemed like a nice girl but I was constantly distracted by the two Very Hungry Caterpillars that had taken up residence above her eyes...

The supporting cast that includes Sigourney Weaver and Alfred Molina happily cash their paycheques whilst sleepwalking through the film. In fact, the ONLY entertaining moment of the film, probably unintentionally, was when Jason Isaacs was kicking Lautner's ass. Sad I know, but these talented thespians unfortunately have nothing to work with from a script that has plot holes so big that you could even fit R-Patz's forehead through, and incredulous gaps in logic from the main characters.
At one point Nathan is in his real father's safehouse and finds a stash of money and weapons, things that might be useful when being chased by dangerous criminals, but decides to leave all those and just take a car that can easily be tracked. Oh, and on that point, the CIA have intercepted every phone call you have made, even from public payphones, but you think it is safe for Karen to call her parents from the phone in your dad's safehouse?! Or what about when they are told that a guy called Paul "Macguffin" is one of only two people they can trust? "We have to find Paul" says Nathan... and then this plot thread is promptly dropped from the film, never to be mentioned again.
It is indicitive of lazy filmmaking that when so little effort is put into the script, it reverberates to every other aspect of the production; acting, cinematography, score (plinky, plonky keyboard to hit emotional keynotes), etc to produce such a dull, turgid mess as this.
"Jac-abs" - please stick to Twilight. Hollywood and the makers of Abduction - I'm not expecting every action film to be Inception or Die Hard, but please, pretty please with sugar on top, try harder in future.

1 star