Abduction stars Taylor Lautner, the guy who plays the werewolf boy friend in those really bad (but teenage girl popular) Twilight movies. Let’s face it, his claim to fame in those movies is to look pretty and take his shirt off as often as possible. Who knew he’s actually a half decent actor, especially when compared to most pretty boys getting movie roles these days. He did a good job in this film, and I think has considerable promise to do even better.
But the production level of this movie is quite low. It often has the feel of a 1970’s TV series. The editing cuts and transitions and often below amateur. Camera work is sad, in fact at one point they actually use a fish eye lens in a tight corridor instead of editing and cutting several scenes together to give the complete picture of the action. Who does that?! Maybe for effect in a drug addict’s nightmare scene, but not in an action movie. Why not wave a flag saying we have no idea what we are doing. So everything from direction, to camera work to editing is seriously below par. Storeyline is good for this style of movie, and our hero Taylor actually brings the whole mess up a notch or two to hold it together.
I was surprised to see that Sigourney Weaver had a small role in this. She always comes across genuine and real in her work. And she obviously adds some credibility to this show. But for her to take a small role in a project with such poor production values, in what I imagine was marketed as a main stream movie, made me wonder for who she was doing a favour.
If this movie starred an ugly nobody it would be a 3.5 at best. But I’ll give it a 6.5 for Taylor and a decent storey with reasonably good action scenes. I’m looking forward to seeing Taylor’s acting career evolve in future projects, where he plays more than a shirtless model, like in Twilight. But I might watch him in those too.
6.5/10