The Ending Of Abduction Explained
Taylor Lautner is best known for one of two roles: the shark-like preteen with anger issues in "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl" and his stint as the sweet yet strong Jacob Black in the "Twilight" series. After he became a household name thanks to the latter series, he branched out and tried his hand at lead roles. Unfortunately for him, his first foray as the leading man didn't go very well, and his 2011 mystery thriller "Abduction" is still clinging to a 5% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
"Abduction" had all the components to be a hit: action, romance, and plenty of twists. It featured Lautner as Nathan Harper, a high school teen who realizes his mom Mara (Maria Bello) and dad Kevin (Jason Isaacs) are not actually his biological parents. As soon as Nathan confirms his suspicions, Mara and Kevin are killed by mysterious operatives, and Nathan goes into hiding with his classmate Karen Murphy (Lily Collins), who gets wrapped up in the mess. The bulk of the film is about Nathan and Karen running from the mysterious forces that want to hurt him, while attempting to discover the truth about his family history.
While "Abduction" was a bit of a mess, the ending left us with even more questions that will probably never be answered.
What just happened?
At the end of "Abduction," Nathan comes face-to-face with the main villlain, Nikola Kozlow (Michael Nyqvist). Seconds before Kozlow pulls the trigger to kill Nathan, a sniper takes Kozlow out. Nathan then gets on a phone call with his biological father, Martin Price (Dermot Mulroney), who not only shot Kozlow but has pulled some strings and managed to convince everyone to leave Nathan and Karen alone to live in peace.
"Abduction" ultimately had a happy ending, but the twisty-turny plot still left us with plenty of questions. Why does Martin have such a huge pull with the CIA? What is the purpose of Nathan being shirtless so often? How did no other passengers on the train hear the intense fight? As an MTV review succinctly put it, "Moments like these happen pretty consistently for the entirety of the film. It was a never-ending barrage of things that didn't make sense, whether small and subtly incompetent or glaringly over-the-top examples of idiocy, it was incessant." While we were happy to see everything wrap up nicely, there wasn't much of an explanation as to how things were taken care of — we sort of just have to accept that they were.
Abduction hurt Taylor Lautner's career
Though many action movies do well enough to pump out a few sequels, "Abduction" had such a negative reception that it's no shock the franchise ended there. What was a bit surprising was the negative effect "Abduction" seemed to have on Lautner's acting career. Aside from an overall Metsacore rating of 25, Lautner's performance in the film was also overwhelmingly panned by critics. Catherine Brown of Filmink wrote "[Director John] Singleton is poorly equipped to handle teenage angst, a fact made far worse by cringe-worthy dialogue and a wooden leading man who proves that he has not yet developed the skills required to carry a film." A less harsh review came from Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, who noted that Lautner "[isn't] a terrible actor, but if he wants a career after the Twilight fades, he'll pick better films."
Lautner has been in a few other projects since "Abduction," but he has yet to shake the reputation that precedes him. Hopefully, if he never makes a full-time return to acting, he has wisely invested his "Twilight" earnings.