Abduction (I) (2011)

Shouldn't a movie entitled Abduction have at minimum one actual abduction? Perhaps the name is a metaphor and I simply missed when the metaphor was defined. Nathan (Taylor Lautner) as seen in the trailer makes a startling discovery that he is on a missing children's website. I found it interesting enough how that discovery came about, and figured that it was plausible enough to just go with it. However, I did not find it plausible how his discovery was validated, just a little bit too convenient. I appreciated the hand to hand combat scenes they step up the excitement in action films, it just goes to show that if you use an actor who has had years of training in some martial arts, that training will come across very convincingly on screen. And the story was kept realistic by Karen (Lily Collins) having absolutely no fighting prowess what so ever. And speaking of Karen, I was just not convinced that she would continue to go along for the ride as long as she did, even though her reasoning was discussed as far as why she was not just going back home and out of Nathan's dilemma. I liked this film, I felt that John Singleton did a great job directing it and keeping a steady pace. I have always liked his directing style as far back as Boyz n the Hood. It was also nice to see some veteran actors who always deliver the goods like Agent Burton (Alfred Molina) as the task force lead for the CIA and Dr. Bennett (Sigourney Weaver) pulling off not just a heady shrink, but also some pretty fancy driving. The adult story lines served to round out the cast with some very solid acting, and that includes Nathan's parents Mara (Maria Bello) and Kevin (Jason Isaacs). I think that the film did a good job of unfolding the background of how this whole thing came to pass, it had sufficient action and the teenagers had the intelligence level I expected, they weren't dumb as a bag of rocks but they made mistakes, in some cases the same kind of mistakes over and over, and they did not hold conversations like Harvard graduates. I liked Dawson's Creek when it was on TV, but come on teenagers don't really use words like 'existential'. This film is not what I would call a must see, but it is definitely worth checking out, it gets a green light. - Emma Dinkins