The Terrible Taylor Lautner Mystery Thriller Finding New Life On Netflix
With the exceptions of Roger Corman, Uwe Boll and, let's be honest, probably Nicolas Cage about 60% of the time, no one starts making a movie knowing full well that it'll stink by the time it's done. A motion picture can only exist with the help of thousands of man hours and the dogged determination of a team of dedicated artists, pouring their lives into a job for months at a time. Disappointment hurts. Like the poet said, "it sucks to suck."
And few films in 2011 learned this lesson more profoundly than "Abduction," the mystery thriller that, when viewed through a contemporary lens, really reminds you that Taylor Lautner used to be in things.
The basics go something like this: A young man named Nathan, played by Lautner, gets a high school research assignment that we're all probably familiar with: looking into missing children cases. Lo and behold, an age progression algorithm shows that Nathan looks eerily similar to the estimated countenance of one such disappeared youth. After a brief investigation, Nathan confronts his parents, and they confirm that he is not, in fact, their biological son.
That's roughly when the shooting starts.
Abduction failed to steal critics' hearts
From this point in the plot forward, "Abduction" has all the component pieces that would normally make a film great. There's action. There's drama. There's intrigue, and romance, and the CIA, and something about a stolen file, and gosh darn it all, there's Dermot Mulroney. But for some reason, the movie just never comes together.
Don't take our word for it. Check out Rotten Tomatoes, where "Abduction" retains a hard-to-look-at 5% critical approval rating a full decade after its debut. It became the kind of movie where reviewers seemed to purposely try and one-up each other in terms of catty cruelty. The Guardian, taking time to first single out Lautner as "he of the fab abs and dazzling gnashers," went on to question why Sigourney Weaver would make time for the flick when "After Avatar, surely she doesn't need the cash." The Telegraph warned that "When Taylor Lautner is the least of a movie's problems, be afraid." The AV Club, using their SAT words so as not to lose them, stated that even by "extraordinarily lenient standards, the inessential, perfunctory 'Abduction' falls short."
But hey, don't let the haters tell you what to do; to hear most snobs tell it, pumpkin-flavored coffee is a dumb idea, too. You can make up your own mind by checking out "Abduction" on Netflix right now.