Nerding Day: Abduction

The Twilight movies produced two A-list stars, Robert Pattinson, known for being the subject of the press release where PETA thanked him for not jacking off a dog, and Kristin Stewart, known for being the woman who makes all other women realize sexuality is more of a spectrum than a black and white concept. There were three people in the Twilight love triangle, though; and it’s kind of crazy that Taylor Lautner (the werewolf abs boy) faded into obscurity so quickly after the movies ended.

You probably haven't heard of the movie Abduction, but it's considered the single thing that killed Taylor Lautner's career. It was supposed to be his breakout starring vehicle, but it ended up getting so critically panned there is a conspiracy theory in the Twilight fandom that it was purposely sabotaged to ruin Taylor Lautner's career. As if someone put a gun to the screenwriter's head and said, "Write the most cliched dialogue of all time, or I'll shoot! Make Sigourney Weaver say okey-dokey, or you'll be sleeping with the fishes."

Abduction has a five percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and most of the excerpts from critics sound like their warm-up material from the Comedy Central Roast of Taylor Lautner. "The dude is so wooden it's like watching Pinnochio with abs," one critic said. Another called him a "hunky neanderthal with the acting range of a dial tone."

The reviews felt to me like film critics blowing off steam at Twilight, which they probably knew was going to spawn decades of knock off, big budget YA novel-to-movie adaptations they were going to have to sit through. It's like a bunch of media professionals got together to celebrate Kick the Kid from Twilight in the Nuts Day. However, after watching the movie, I have to say the kid from Twilight kind of deserved those nut kicks. Here's a scrapbook of the acting range displayed by Lautner in Abduction.

Taylor Lautner seeing an aged-up version of a missing child that looks exactly like him:

Taylor Lautner seeing a girl he's madly in love with:

Taylor Lautner realizing he has just taken the life of a human man who may have had a family:

Taylor Lautner realizing the man he's sitting next to murdered his mother:

Taylor Lautner being told his biological father is a government spy/assassin:

Taylor Lautner hearing his biological father's voice for the first time:

As you can see, someone has taught Taylor that acting is a small array of facial scrunches. He has a scrunch for his dead parents and a scrunch for his hot girlfriend, but they're uncomfortably similar scrunches. Somehow he isn't the worst thing in the movie, though! It's got many non-facial-scrunch-related problems, from all of the dialogue to the way the movie refuses to stop giving you the same plot exposition over and over again as if they're afraid you're not getting it for some reason even though the plot is not at all complicated.

Everyone in this movie introduces themselves by saying how they will be helpful to Taylor Lautner's character Nathan later in the movie. His best friend has three identifying traits. He sells fake IDs, goes to the gun range two to three times a week, and has two tickets to a baseball game. It's like introducing a character in a heist movie who says, "My hobbies are rappelling off buildings, contortionism, and card counting. Maybe they'll come into play later, so just in case let me repeat them."

We also meet Nathan's parents, whom he tells his therapist, Sigourney Weaver, that he feels disconnected from as if they are strangers, but he doesn't explain why and later he calls them the best parents ever, so I have no idea how he actually feels about them. It doesn't matter, though; because after Nathan and his sociology class partner / love interest find a picture of him as a child on a website for missing kids, Nathan contacts the person who runs the site, and some Russian guys show up to murder his parents.

They also want to abduct Taylor Lautner, but they don’t succeed. I think it’s important to say Lautner was never abducted. In fact, no one is ever abducted in the movie Abduction.

It turns out his parents were spies, protecting him because his Dad was the best spy in the world and the picture on the missing kid's website was a phishing scam to lure him out of hiding. Nathan's spy parents take care of most of the bad guys before dying, but one remains for Nathan to punch. This is the critical "uh oh" point of the movie. Up until now, the only notably bad bit of filmmaking was Taylor Lautner's Dad hitting a lawnmower with a hammer for most of a scene with no apparent goal or reason.

But this line of dialogue was what tipped me off Abduction was as career ruiningly bad as promised. During a maniac tantrum, Nathan demands Thug #5 tell him who he is and why he killed his parents. The thug responds in a voice so bored and monotone the only note the director could possibly have given was, "You're about to die, and you're completely at peace with it." He says, "Nathan, I'll tell you what you need to know, but I'm not dying here. There's a bomb in the oven."

You assume this is a ploy, but Nathan is young and dumb, so he runs to the oven, and surprise: there's actually a bomb in it set to go off in seven seconds. Nathan does what anyone would do and leaves, but Thug #5 doesn't think of this. So he did die there. Someone hired this man to blow up Taylor Lautner with an oven bomb and he got his ass kicked, told everyone about the bomb in time for them to escape, and then exploded. I have seen lawnmower hammerers better at their jobs than this guy. And from that moment on, it's like all of the other characters were competing to sneak the most cliche spy dialogue into the movie.

A safe house full of bad guys gets murdered, and Alfred Molina, playing a CIA figurehead, says, "I'm only sorry there weren't more of them there."

When Nathan brings his love interest, Lily Collins, on the run with him, Sigourney Weaver says, "Leave the girl. You're better off alone."

Toward the end of the movie Lily Collins, laments that "A few days ago we were just a couple of high school kids. Or it feels like a lifetime ago."

"That's because it was," Nathan replies, face-scrunchingly.

Alfred Molina plays a CIA agent in charge of getting Nathan to safety, but Sigourney Weaver (also a spy) warns Nathan not to trust him because she thinks he's corrupt and, gasp, he is! This would be a great place to put a twist in the movie where Sigourney Weaver is actually the one who's working with the Russians, but whoever purposely sabotaged this script to bring down Taylor Lautner couldn't let that happen.

The Russians and the CIA aren't just after Nathan because his dad is a spy. It's because he recently stole a list of politicians and government agents who sold state secrets in the past. This is the thing we see explained three different times in the movie. At one point, it's explained to Nathan, who turns around and explains it to Lily Collins in the very next scene. The CIA wants the list. The Russian spies want the list. Where is the list? In a text message on a Nokia flip phone.

Abduction was made in 2011, and that seems pretty late to have a text message on a Nokia flip phone be so central to the plot. Any media in a movie dates it, but every time that phone appears, it's funny. He might as well have faxed the list to Nathan or sent it to his beeper, maybe recorded himself reading it, and then uploaded the audio file to a Zune after disabling the planetary shield blocking the transmission.

Nathan comes into possession of the Maltese Nokia after being instructed to go to his father's safe house at 4311 Clarendon Boulevard  Apt. 2, Arlington, VA. He doesn't. He specifically says they've arrived at Clarendon Avenue, and the apartment they enter is marked 202, but no one cares, and it's the right place. The Maltese Nokia is stashed in the apartment for some reason, even though we're explicitly told Nathan's father can't get to the US for 36 hours, so how the phone got to that apartment before him is never made clear?

Eventually, the CIA catches up to Nathan and Lily Collins, whose only job in the movie is to slow Nathan down and let him pet her hair. I've never seen a more underwritten female character. I know nothing about her other than her history with Nathan and the fact that she bruises easily.

Most of the movie is them on the run from both the CIA and the Russians. But, and you're not going to believe this, remember that friend of Nathan's from the beginning of the movie who has guns, fake IDs and baseball tickets? He shows up with all that stuff and gives it to Nathan, who lures the Russian guy who's been chasing him to the baseball game where Lily Collins has planted a gun under his seat. It's unclear what the plan is. I guess Nathan will shoot a man in public and then enjoy America's national pastime?

The ending gave me the best glimpse into the thinking of the people that created Abduction, which was that they wanted to make a hardcore action movie to introduce action star Taylor Lautner to the world, but they also wanted it to be a romantic teen drama like Twilight. So they took those two genres and smooshed them together, creating a teen romance movie that begins with the main character's parents being shot to death in front of him and ends with him saying, "Man, that was some first date, huh?" as he laughs and scrunches his face at his girlfriend.

The next action movie Taylor Lautner did was about a bike messenger who gets mixed up in a gang that robs banks using parkour. So you can forgive any conspiracy theorists who think someone in Hollywood is trying to destroy Taylor Lautner's career. There's a good chance they're right.

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