Plot
A thriller centered on a young man who sets out to uncover the truth about his life after finding his baby photo on a missing persons website.
Release Year: 2011
Rating: 4.6/10 (20,975 voted)
Critic's Score: 25/100
Director:
John Singleton
Stars: Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Alfred Molina
Storyline Nathan, a teen, along with his friend, Karen finds a website that has photos of children who are missing or believed to have been abducted. They decide to age one of the photos and discover that is of Nathan as a child. He contacts the person who placed the photo to find out what's going on. The person on the other end only wants to know info about Nathan so Nathan hangs up. The person then contacts someone in Europe and shows him a photo of the one who called. He then heads for the U.S. Nathan then wonders is it true, was he abducted. He tells his "mom" who then tells him she and his "father" will tell him. But before they can, two men claiming to be cops show up wanting to talk to Nathan, and when he isn't found they pull guns and demand Nathan be given to them. His parents fight them but are killed. Nathan runs but remembers that he asked Karen to come over...
Cast: Jake Andolina
-
CIA Man
Oriah Acima Andrews
-
Riah
Ken Arnold
-
Thermal
Maria Bello
-
Mara
Steve Blass
-
Game Announcer
Derek Burnell
-
Hot Dog Vendor
Benjamin J. Cain Jr.
-
Driver
(as Ben Cain)
Holly Scott Cavanuagh
-
Mrs. Murphy
Radick Cembrzynski
-
Kozlow's Tech
Richard Cetrone
-
Gregory
Mike Clark
-
News Reporter
Lily Collins
-
Karen
Jack Erdie
-
Short Sleeves
Rita Gregory
-
Nurse
Tim Griffin
-
Red Flannel
Taglines:
The fight for the truth will be the fight of his life.
Opening Weekend: $10,925,253
(USA)
(25 September 2011)
(3118 Screens)
Gross: $28,064,226
(USA)
(11 December 2011)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia: Shawn Christensen said that the story for the film was taken from a single idea of a teenager who sees a photo of himself on a missing persons website. He completed the first draft in two months.
Goofs:
Factual errors:
When the CIA agent presents the Kozlow case, on the right side of the LCD you can see "known associates". The man in focus seems to have the newest Croatian biometric passport. However, the picture on it would not have been accepted as a passport photo due to dark background. Also, the picture, obviously taken from the "passport" is not edited (in Croatian passports, photos are "digitally enhanced" to emphasize ears, nose, eyes, all facial hair and the chin. As a consequence, the photos in Croatian passports look more like drawings than real photographs.
Quotes: Nathan:
They killed my parents. Burton:
They weren't your real parents.
User Review
Bland action thriller that tries- but fails- to be the younger Bourne, no thanks to Taylor Lautner's hammy acting
Rating:
Five minutes. That was how long it took before Taylor Lautner took his
shirt off in his purportedly gritty action thriller 'Abduction'- and
depending on how you took to that fact, you may find yourself enjoying
every minute of it or cringing in disbelief. Right from the start, this
Taylor-made vehicle makes no excuses for being a breakout role for the
'Twilight' star- after all, if Team Edward (or Robert Pattinson) can do
it, then there's no reason why Team Jacob can't do likewise.
Nonetheless, it seems that Team Jacob should have just stayed in the
woods of Forks, Washington, for this insipid Bourne-wannabe does him
nor his fans no favours. Rather, (and we may be risking our life and
limb by saying this) it only demonstrates his limitations as an actor,
especially since he practically recycles the same angsty broody
expression throughout the film that he had already put forth umpteen
times in the 'Twilight' movies. And no, being a teenager who discovers
that the people you call 'mother' and 'father' aren't in fact your real
parents isn't much of an excuse too.
That's the predicament Lautner's character Nathan finds himself in one
day, after stumbling across a website with photos of missing children
and using some software to approximate what one of those kids could
look like as a teenager. Though that's the very premise of the movie,
the least we expected was for debut feature film screenwriter Shawn
Christensen to come up with a better lead in than just some stupid
research assignment Nathan and his girl next door Karen (Lily Collins,
daughter of singer Phil) was assigned to work together on.
Logic and coherence are however too much evidently to demand, as one
would have to suspend both to believe that Nathan is suddenly at the
centre of global espionage with both the good guys (led by 'Spiderman
2's' Alfred Molina) and the bad guys (led by Swedish actor Michael
Nyqvist from 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo') in pursuit. Apparently,
Nathan is the son of a top secret CIA undercover operative whose
'parents' (Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello) are fellow CIA agents sent to
protect him while his father is away. As with all chases, the aim is
for something that Nathan has in his possession- some encrypted code
with the names of dirty CIA agents.
It takes almost half an hour before the action kicks in, the
introduction that sets up Nathan's adolescent issues and his secret
high-school crush on Karen pure tedium that is definitely not director
John Singleton's forte. Thankfully, the pace picks up considerably once
Nathan is thrust into that implausible situation, with Singleton
clearly at ease setting up the film's various action sequences. One of
the first that sees Nathan's 'parents' murdered is shot and edited for
maximum thrills, and the climax set in a packed stadium with a live
baseball match also packs suspense.
To Lautner's credit, the action also looks good because he performs
most, if not all, of the stunts by himself- whether tackling a bigger-
sized guy MMA-style or fleeing from the bad guys with parkour.
Singleton doesn't go for the shaky-cam technique, allowing his audience
to appreciate Lautner's physicality in its full glory. Even so, taking
on the lead role requires Lautner to perform some serious acting in
order for us to identify with his character's inner distress, but the
square- jawed actor with his one-note performance fails to inspire any
empathy.
The fault doesn't lie with Lautner entirely- to appeal to the teenage
demographic which the producers are relying on to turn up for this
movie, they have decided to amp up the obligatory romance between
Nathan and Karen, even to the extent of letting the two teenage
characters engage in some heavy making-out that stops just before it
crosses the PG13 boundary. It is distracting and laughable, although
the latter seems to be in line with most of the awful dialogue in the
film.
Not even veteran stars like Isaacs, Bello, Molina, Nyqvist and
Sigourney Weaver (who plays Nathan's psychologist) can redeem this
at-best made- for-TV thriller that tries to be the younger version of
the Bourne series. So as much as Team Jacob may wish for Lautner to be
their Matt Damon, or even Tom Cruise, it is clear from his debut
headlining movie that once the 'Twilight' phenomenon fades, the same
can probably be said of Lautner's acting career as well.
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