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Movie Review: Abduction (2011)

A quick spoiler for those of you considering putting down your hard earned money on Abduction: Nobody in it gets abducted. Guns are fired, people are murdered, others are beaten up, and spies from the CIA battle a rogue Russian black-ops agent looking to regain some stolen files, but the only people who get kidnapped here are Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver and Michael Nyqvist, who were apparently blindfolded and shoved into a van headed to Pittsburgh. There, they were forced, likely at gunpoint, to recite 20-years worth of teen action movie cliches as Taylor Lautner smiled or grimaced at them, depending on the scenario.

There happen to be two scenarios. In the first, Nathan (Lautner), is a typical high school kid. He crushes on the girl next door (Lily Collins), gets wasted at a party, gets busted by his dad and, like your normal American high school kid, is beaten up by him in the backyard of their fantastic mansion. Lautner is all smiles here, other than when he’s about to deck his crush’s boyfriend or when he’s at therapy, where his shrink (Weaver) leads him by the hand through some angsty boilerplate. Despite the fun he has playing beer pong and riding his motorcycle, he feels weird, like he doesn’t belong at the school or with his family…a stranger in his own skin.

If that’s not familiar enough, there’s scenario two, where Lautner discovers that his parents aren’t his parents, that he’s been trained by world-class martial artists, and that he has a Russian hit squad coming after him for unknown reasons. He finds this out because, conveniently, he was assigned a paper on missing persons, and a missing persons site had some software that aged an old baby photo of his into a shockingly accurate future-him. The girl he’s crushing on, Karen, immediately jumps to the most alarmist conclusion: “Like, ohmigod Nathan, your parent’s totally aren’t your parents! They, like, abducted you or something!”

Only they didn’t abduct him, and they’re soon shot dead by the Russians. The CIA gets involved, and Nathan and Karen run from both groups, traveling in teen-friendly vehicles like 2011 BMWs and Amtrak trains as CIA man Burton (Molina) and the rogue Kozlow (Nyqvist) chase him down. The rest of the movie consists of standard chase scenes, punctuated briefly by bits of dialog so awkward, Sir Laurence Olivier would struggle in lending them gravitas.

“I’m not dying here,” A man says, trying to fend off Lautner’s blows. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know. There’s a bomb in the oven.”

And then Lautner goes to the oven, discovers that there is indeed a bomb in it (a decidedly old-school looking one that must have been placed and set magically), and manages to drag his panic-stricken future girlfriend to safety, even though the digital readout is at a comically short seven seconds. This, of course, means that the man who swore he wasn’t dying there dies, which would be sad were he not inept at his job. Later, in recounting the day’s tragedy, Lautner grimaces and deadpans “I just saw my parents get murdered in front of my eyes.”

And that’s just it…his parents did get murdered, right in front of his eyes even, and his loss just flat does not register. Yes, I understand that he’s an “action hero” and I get that he’s got “rage issues.” But rage is an emotion, and it’s the one action heroes need. First Blood, for example, would be nothing without Stallone breaking down and crying into Richard Crenna’s arms at the end of the movie, and half of Schwarzenegger‘s best stuff would similarly be wasted were he not enraged that somebody killed/kidnapped/threatened his wife/child/Christmas cookies. Neither Schwarzenegger or Stallone were particularly known for pathos, but, bulletproof though they were, they reacted to danger as if it were dangerous. Here, in an empty PNC Park, Lautner puts his arm around his girl and cracks wise about how exciting their first date was, despite missing the Pirates game.

Yeah bro, but your parents are still dead. Maybe you ought to work through those issues before sliding into second base.

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Abduction. Directed by John Singletary. With Taylor Lautner (Nathan), Lily Collins (Karen), Alfred Molina (Agt. Burton), Michael Nyqvist (Koslow), and Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Bennett). Released September 23, 2011, by Lionsgate.

Movie Review: Avatar (2009)

Avatar is the work of a man obsessed by detail. James Cameron spent years coming up with Pandora, the planet that our far-off progeny see as a violent little backwater good for nothing more than the rare fuel that can be found in abundance there, and it shows. This movie, the very definition of an event film, is more a showcase for the incredibly impressive special effects than it is a proper blockbuster. After how huge Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was, I’m surprised this country has the patience for two-and-a-half hours of 3D exploration.

The film begins with Earth, represented by an energy company and the United States Marines, on the verge of war with the Na’vi, a group of indigenous, ten foot tall elves who, future America asserts, are highly primitive. This makes sense, as it’s the conclusion reached by virtually every visiting, colonizing force upon arrival in a new world. Not content with destroying one planet, our bulldozers are set to raze the Na’vi’s forest to get at some precious metal. Lush forests? Exotic animals? They’re what happen to stand between the corporate bigwigs and their huge yearly bonus.

The corporation has made the vital mistake of bringing along a group of scientists. Being curious bastards, as all scientists are, they want to explore the land. Worse, they want to create a bond to the Na’vi. They’re able to do so by means of telepathically controlling bio-genetically engineered Na’vi/human hybrids—the Avatars. Corporal Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a paraplegic Marine, happens to be brothers with a scientist to whom one of the Avatars belonged. That brother dies unexpectedly, and the keys to the Avatar are tossed to him. He falls asleep in a tube, wakes up, and can walk again.

He is assigned to learn all he can about the Na’vi to bring about the terms of their surrender and relocation, unbeknownst to the team of scientists he is working with. So Jake goes out and explores Pandora, and we walk out into the world with him, and it is good. Really good. We observe the plants. We run from the animals. We meet the natives. Jake is as fascinated by this as any of us would be, his newfound ability to walk becoming secondary to his daily exploration of Pandora. One day, he is separated from the group. He tries to survive a night away from camp and is attacked by dogs (or dog-looking things), only to be rescued by the princess (Zoë Saldana). Though she considers Jake an idiot, he slowly wins her respect, not to mention her love, all while learning the way of the Na’vi.

The movie really is spectacular to behold, but there are times when the story struggles to be worth the effort put into the special effects. A variation on one of the oldest stories in the book, Cameron fails to flesh out the bulk of his characters enough to make the film stand out as a stellar story. The characters are pure stock. The scientists distrust the military, which is full of hardasses who say things like “You’re not in Kansas anymore” to a group of fresh fish stepping off the spaceship. The face of the faceless corporation is a snarky, stupid jerk. The hero, disability aside, is good looking, driven, and stiff as a board. Michelle Rodriguez shoots guns and sounds tough, as Michelle Rodriguez often does. The computer generated Na’vi are more convincing characters than the flesh-and-blood humans. It’s no wonder the members of the Avatar program spend more time in a different body than their own.

While I am always impressed with the meticulous nature of James Cameron’s work, I couldn’t help but think that Avatar could have had a better script for the ten years Cameron spent on it. It’s one thing to have a crew of stock characters. It’s quite another when the whole movie feels like little more than a retread of every other fish-out-of-water space opera. We’re meant to be wowed by what’s in front of us, and we are. At times, Avatar made me feel the way I did when I saw Star Wars for the first time—stunned by the details in the visual spectacle. At other times, Avatar made me feel the way I felt the first time I saw any of the Star Wars prequels—impressed, but empty. Jake’s mission was to find out how the Na’vi lived, but he, and we, come away without really knowing who they are and why they matter. There is so much detail at Avatar‘s surface, but it feels like Cameron just kind of stopped, like it was enough to show how the giant blue elves ran through trees and rode dragons. A real shame, too. Something this good looking really deserved to be more special.

Rating:

Avatar. Directed by James Cameron. With Sam Worthington (Jake Sulley), Zoë Saldana (Neytiri), Sigourney Weaver (Dr. Grace Augustine), Stephen Lang (Colonel Miles Quaritch), Michelle Rodriguez (Trudy Chacon), and Giovanni Ribisi (Parker Selfridge). Released December 18, 2009, by 20th Century Fox.