Taylor Lautner’s abs put on an excellent performance in Abduction. Seriously, his abs have never looked better. Combine his defined abs with his gigantic biceps and you’ve got a star-quality body that’s grown and matured since the actor’s Twilight days. It’s too bad he hasn’t matured as an actor as well. Lautner obviously spent more time in the gym toning his hot bod than reading the terrible script he was provided.
Abduction may be an action film, but it’s an action film aimed at Lautner’s teenage girl fan base. It’s certainly not for anyone who likes action movies or has any logical thoughts in their head. In the corny, cliché-laced Abduction, Lautner plays high school-aged beefcake Nathan who the filmmakers would like you believe is a thrill seeker, as evidenced by the opening scene of him riding on the hood of a speeding pickup. For a sociology class assignment, Nathan is paired up with his crush, Karen, played by Lily Collins, whose eyebrows look terrible. (Girl, call me. I know a good waxer!). The two discover Nathan’s childhood picture on a missing persons website and he learns the people who raised him aren’t his real parents.
Abduction brings together everything people loved about Lautner in the Twilight movies. To wit, pointlessly taking off his shirt to expose a body that women of all ages will drool over and riding a motorcycle. Once again he isn’t asked to act. Rather, he just stands there on the screen, looking both intense and smoldering. There are also some roundhouse kicks and fighting. But Lautner’s delivery in Abduction is choppy, like he’s reading them from cue cards written by a five year old. That goes for Sigourney Weaver, too, who plays his therapist and a former CIA operative. (Say it ain’t so, Ripley!)
There’s speculation about what Lautner and his two partners in Twilight fame will do once the teenage vampire romance series ends next year. Robert Pattinson has obviously taken the more dramatic route with films like Water For Elephants. Kristen Stewart has Kerouac’s On the Road coming up. Lautner, on the other hand, seems to be shooting for a career in action movies. But after watching Abduction, it’s clear he’s not ready to carry an action movie on his own. Maybe if he were to take some acting classes instead of kickboxing classes, he’d be ready to work and his career wouldn’t fizzle out before he’s 21.
Abduction
HIIII
Directed by John Singleton. Starring Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Sigourney Weaver. Rated PG-13
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2011.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
for once i agree with what a reviewer has written, and i LOVE me some taylor….but the script sucked, even sigouney weaver was HORRIBLE, esp. at the end…..no one apparently screened the script for believability–even at the end, where it sounds like he breaks his leg after a jump, he just limps off with lily and sits in the bleachers. and no debriefing by the CIA????REALLY??
like i said, i love lautner but think he has a way to go….really disappointed with Singletons directing on this one…..i hope for a better movie for taylor…i really liked the semi-steamy scene on the train, and the action sequences were great.