Abduction - 3 stars out of 10

Abduction - 3 stars out of 10

Oh "Abduction," where to begin... The city of Pittsburgh looks wonderful on the big screen and as a native of the city, it was very exciting to see so many familiar sights throughout the movie.  This ends the complimentary portion of the review.  Enter Taylor Lautner: the worst actor since Hayden Christensen.  There must have been someone off-screen saying "Okay, now turn and look at your parents.  Okay, start walking away.  Okay, awkwardly pause and look back at your parents again."  I'm sure that teenage girls love this film because he takes his shirt off, but anybody outside of that realm will be looking to throw tomatoes at the sceen (and the occasional watermelon).  Lily Collins was better but still had her moments of bad acting.  More maddening than anything was the inclusion of quality actors Alfred Molina, Michael Nyqvist, Maria Bello, and Sigourney Weaver into this weak script.  They all should have known better, particularly when Sigourney read through the script and saw that one of her lines was "I hate balloons..."  One would think that she delivered it in the dry, monotoned voice to stress the fact that the script is absurd, but she just should have run in the other direction when offered this contract.  This script was obviously written as a vehicle to turn Lautner into a "masculine fantasy" with an unnecessary shedding of clothing, lengthy fight sequences where several punches would do, and an endless make-out scene that grows in intensity every time that it should stop.  Once again, how do you intend to make any money when your target audience cannot drive themselves to the theater and the parents will not want to sit through this?  I actually thought that the concept and twists were all very good.  It's just ruined because of a poor script that becomes more farfetched by the moment, and this is coming from a guy who loves to suspend his disbelief for a great action flick!  I just couldn't see this high school student destroying a ton of professional killers.  The action truly is enjoyable but too unrealistic.  The film does a good job of explaining how he knows how to fight, but asks too much of the audience during the fights in the house and on the train.  Not to mention the 22-hour timeframe from the house to the hospital to the woods to Virginia back to Pittsburgh to a train ride to a train escape back into the woods.  Honestly, this is merely a weak film trying to capitalize on the success of Twilight and your best bet is to read a synopsis on Wikipedia and then watch the final 20 minutes at PNC Park.  There is little to gain from this story but everything to gain from seeing a chase scene through the ballpark and a slide down the glass about the escalators.