FORMAT: DVD
Before Twilight co-star Taylor Lautner fell off the face of the Earth, he tried his hand as an action hero. Abduction was his first attempt. It was directed by… (checks notes) Boyz N the Hood’s John Singleton!?! A quick look at IMDb tells me that this was to be the late director’s final movie. Which only goes to show that you probably shouldn’t direct a Taylor Lautner action movie is there’s always a chance it will be your final directing credit.
Lautner stars as a high school student who stumbles upon a picture of himself on a website for missing children. He calls the missing kids hotline, which turns out to be a trap because the bad guys come after him and the people he thought were his parents die protecting him. Taylor and his girlfriend (Lily Collins) go on the run. Before long, the bad guys, the CIA, and the guys from the CIA who are also bad guys come after him.
Basically, all this plays like a Young Adult version of The Bourne Identity. Despite a decent hook, it quickly devolves into your typical man on the run (or in this case, teen on the run) cliches. The title also makes no sense because Taylor’s character was never abducted to begin with.
For a movie so generic and forgettable, it has a shockingly good supporting cast. We have Jason Isaacs, Maria Bello, Sigourney Weaver, and Alfred Molina in the cast. (They all must’ve been Team Jacob.) They came to play too, which is nice, as their efforts make the film, at the very least, watchable.
I guess Singleton was trying his hand at a mid-budget studio action flick. Even the rather lame 2 Fast 2 Furious had a sense of energy and silliness to it. While competent and slick (the direction that is, the script is another matter entirely), it’s never quite engaging. With a passable action star in the lead and a script that wasn’t so generic, this might’ve worked. With Lautner front and center, Abduction just seems like something your grandmother would watch on Ion TV in the middle of the afternoon.
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