Alien (1979)

A quick aside before I continue: This my 200th entry in this blog, and I'm particularly proud for having done so many. Like my 100th entry, when I did a favorite of mine, "Demolition Man," for this one I'm doing one of my favorite films of all time. Thanks to everyone who reads this little experiment of mine!

In the late 70's struggling screenwriter Dan O'Bannon was living on producer Ronald Shusett's couch. He was homeless and had no money. His lone previous writing project had been "Darkstar," the sci-fi comedy which was also the directorial debut of a young John Carpenter. He was a man with great talent, but little success. Then Fox picked up a the rights to a screenplay he had called "Alien." To direct they got an unknown British television commercial maker named Ridley Scott and a barely tested stage actress named Sygourney Weaver to be the lead. It had a budget of $11 million.

And after it came out in 1979, the movie world was never the same.

There are a lot of movies I would call "one of my favorites," and plenty of movie franchises I would say the same about, but when it comes to the "Alien" series, the only thing that can even come close to comparing in terms of my all-time favorite sci-fi films is "Star Wars." And now that the prequels have come along to taint what was once glorious, I'm unsurprisingly leaning more towards Ripley and the Xenomorphs.

I played bass for "Ripley and The Xenomorphs."

"Alien" essentially created modern sci-fi horror. Before then space had been a sterile, clean place for the Kubricks, Roddenberrys and Lucas's of the world to make pretty and high-tech looking. After all, it's space travel! The future! Warp Factor 1, Kessel runs in less than 12 parsecs and "I can't let you do that, Dave" and whatnot. But "Alien" gave us a realistic, dirty, lived-in future which actually looked like what space travel would probably be like in our eternally less-glamorous-than-we-imagined reality.

Perhaps it was this sense of realism that made what the film had in store for its audiences so hard-hitting and shocking. Scary creatures from another planet attacking us was not something new by any means. Hell that's every 50's drive-in movie ever made. And the idea of a person becoming corrupted by the monsters had been done in "Invasion of The Body Snatchers." But that film didn't feature the shocking gore combined with the sublime direction and timing of Ridley Scott. It was almost like a proto-Cronenberg experiment in body horror - something inside you that you can't control, violating you and literally getting under your skin before it claws its way out, ripping you apart.

The infamous chestburster sequence, which also happens to be my personal favorite movie scene of all time, got such a reaction from audiences that it was famously reported that people were getting sick in the theaters. The level of gore on display was the kind of thing you saw in "I Spit on Your Grave," not a monster movie about something from space. Those movies are silly and unrealistic. Or at least, they were until "Alien" came around to inject that realism. It always seemed authentic, even with an outlandish creature running about, because it took itself seriously, contained real characters, and all the grit and grime that comes from a setting that feels legitimate.

They did not skimp on the dank, that's for sure.

Most people today seeing it for the first time would probably consider "Alien" to be slow and timid compared to what they're used to, and they wouldn't be too much to blame for feeling that way. Cinema has evolved a lot in the 34 years since it was released, and time is not kind to most horror movies, as it's the nature of the genre to push the envelope and ramp up the scares. And like the majority of horror films of that era, a good amount of time is spent with building atmosphere and characterization. This has the trivial consequence of making it so you don't want to see bad things happen to the characters, which makes you feel something when those things inevitably happen.

He died with his dignity.

And like any respectable horror film, much is left to the imagination. Despite the horrific gore-fest of the dinner scene, that's the most graphic "Alien" gets by a mile. The rest is done in quick flashes of violence and is actually kind of subtle, even though what's happening is that the alien is ramming its "tongue" through the brain of its victims, which is pretty hardcore. It's even implied that the alien may have raped the character of Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) before killing her, or for all we know she was killed because of the rape (if it happened), which is all kinds of horrible that's unpleasant to even entertain the thought of. But we're left to draw those conclusions based on what the movie doesn't show us. And that, for my money, is the way to go, because when let to their own devices, our minds always do far worse things to the characters than the movie could have shown us.

Speaking of characters, "Alien" also set the precedent for what is now commonly referred to as "The Strong Female Lead," although few have been as well written or portrayed. Sygourney Weaver's performance as Lt. Ellen Ripley is one of the great landmarks in sci-fi and horror movies in general. There hadn't been too many movie characters like her before: a strong, intelligent, resourceful woman who was capable of being a badass, all while being totally organic about the whole process, and not making a big deal (or any deal at all) about the fact that she was female.

Wow. It's almost like you're an actual person instead of simply being defined by your gender...

A lot of characters like that and the actresses portraying a tough woman, be it your Michelle Rodriguezs or Milla Jovovichs or what have you, tend to come off as really artificial to me, mostly because they're always so in-your-face about being tough. They constantly have to remind the audience with a sneer and a one-liner that they're a badass, and are often combative far past the point where any normal person would stop and take it down a notch, just for variety's sake.

With Ripley it wasn't like that. She is a normal person in every respect, and she acts like it. She gets scared, confused and desperate just like anyone else would. But she just so happens to be brave and clever (and lucky) enough to survive to the end credits when everyone else didn't. There isn't a single point during "Alien" which seems like the pandering moment where the women are supposed to say "You go girl!" to the screen. It's nice when a movie doesn't treat its viewers like trained seals.

That's not to ignore the rest of the cast, all of whom are just legendary in this movie. Ian Holm, Tom Skerritt, Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton are of course phenomenal. But for me the two standouts besides Sygourney are Veronica Cartwright and John Hurt. Cartwright gives a performance which has to hold some kind of world record for a single person conveying that much fear. It's almost to the point of being obnoxious, actually. Had it not been for a stellar acting job it probably would have been. And John Hurt had an alien rip out of his ribcage. I'd say that earns anybody a mention when talking about memorable performances.

"WAAAASSSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!?!?!"

The only weakness to "Alien" is that there are aspects of it that time has not been kind to. This is mostly the specials effects on the alien itself. At the end of the day, it's just a guy in a suit. And while I'll prefer that any day over CGI, the problem is that since the suit was so awkward, and the poor dude couldn't actually see anything while wearing it (true story), there's never a great sense of gracefulness or predatory instinct when you finally get a good look at the thing. It's far too slow moving, almost like it's sleepy or drugged out of its mind, and there's one shot in particular (in Lambert and Parker's death scene) where it looks like the thing is a Thanksgiving Day Parade float, just smoothly cruising down the avenue, animatronic arms slowly moving up and down. It looks ridiculous.

"Mammy! Doncha know me?! It's your lil' baby!"

Also, there's always been something that's bugged the crap out of me: When Dallas or Ripley are talking to Mother, the ship's AI, they interact with it by typing out questions into the computer. Well, they'll only hit like 5 keys, but those 5 keystrokes are apparently enough to type of something like "REQUEST EXPLANATION FOR SCIENCE INABILITY TO NEUTRALIZE ALIEN." I have no idea what that interface is like at that point. I know watching them type all that out isn't exciting, but come on. Type faster. Ripley one-finger types like she's trying her best to break the damn thing.

MUST. TYPE. HARD ENOUGH. TO BREAK. FINGERS!!!

But those hardly ruin the movie, and most of the problems can be traced back to "Alien" being a product of its time, and for the budget they had it still looks fantastic. Even with the Apple II looking computers and their keyboards with buttons as big as cats. This is a film I could watch over and over and over again. Which I have done.

And somehow, in some ways, impossibly...in 1986 it got even better.

This trailer is a shockingly accurate representation of the movie. Starts slow with nothing happening, building an uncomfortable atmosphere before going INSANE at the end. Well done.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Alien" is one of the best science fiction films ever made. It's also one of the best horror films ever made. And it's certainly, in my opinion, THE best film to cross those two genres. And it's one of my all-time favorite movies. It shaped my tastes in sci-fi, horror, gaming, and film. I can't express my love for it enough.

Red Lights (2012)

Let's talk for a minute about movies that have bad endings. Now it's true that a bad ending does not automatically make the whole film bad. If there is entertainment to be found before the ending hits, then you can't call it a complete failure. I am reminded of the ending of "The Golden Compass," which was horribly disappointing because it just ended without any resolution. Then again, it was the first part of a trilogy that had the next two films canceled, so we can't really blame it if the open ended nature of the ending is unsatisfying. Which it was. Especially since that series would have been crazy awesome.

There is, however, a difference between a movie with a bad ending and a movie with a stupid ending. While stupid endings are bad, bad endings aren't necessarily stupid. Let's take a look at the differences between the two.

Bad Ending - An ending which is unsatisfying, not necessarily because of ambiguity, but because it fails to adequately fulfill any promises the rest of the film mat have offered.
Example: "No Country For Old Men" was very interesting up until the last half hour when the main freaking character, Josh Brolin, gets unceremoniously killed off camera and forgotten about, effectively derailing the entire narrative. Then Javier Bardem crashes his car and walks off, Tommy Lee Jones tells us about a dream he had, and the movie just ends. Not like Josh Brolin's story was interesting or anything. No, I want to hear some vague psychoanalysis of dreams. That's riveting.

Stupid Ending - An ending that insults your intelligence by expecting you to have paid no attention to the rest of the movie, or have absolutely no concern about anything making a lick of sense whatsoever.
Example: The ending of "The Book of Eli" expects us to believe that Denzel Washington not only accurately memorized the entire Bible cover to cover, word for word, but was also blind the entire movie. Yet he constantly was pulling off not only devastatingly effective kung-fu, which while highly dubious is possible, but also had him shooting a gun with pinpoint accuracy on many occasions. I'm talking drilling a guy between the eyes at 50 paces accurate here. While blind as Stevie Wonder. I guess we were supposed to believe that God himself was nudging his arm just a bit more to the left and saying "There ya go. That's a headshot right there." Why is God helping Denzel shoot people? What ever happened to "Thou shalt not kill?" I love when religious tripe contradicts itself.

You see the difference in the two? One is just disappointing, the other is enough to get you mad because you feel like you just wasted your time while the movie laughs at you for it. And I would take a bad ending over a stupid ending any day.

But what possible reason could I have for beginning this post with a diatribe about stupid endings? What possible reason indeed...

"This isn't ending well for me, is it?"

"Red Lights" is a mystery about a pair of professors/paranormal investigators, played by Cillian Murphy and Sygourney Weaver, who go around debunking supernatural claims with science and all that good stuff. Robert De Niro is a blind psychic named Simon Silver, who is apparently capable of extraordinary things including spoon bending, mind reading, and being able to make a person's heart stop. That last one is what prompted his retirement years ago, when one of his critics mysteriously dropped dead. But when he makes an unexpected comeback, the team of investigators feel it's a perfect opportunity to see if there really is more to him than gimmicks.

That's all well and good, and it is admittedly interesting to see the tricks that those phonies use to appear magical, despite the fact that most of the time it just boils down to the guy wearing an ear piece that has someone on the other end feeding him information. It's nothing too advanced, but every once in a while there's a neat little trick they expose which can provide something of a "eureka" moment if you've ever wondered how that stuff works.

There is also an emotional lynchpin with Sygourney's character, who has a son who has been in a coma for some 20 years. She's an atheist, and for her that means that she can't bring herself to take her son off of life support, because she doesn't believe there's anything afterwards. If she did believe, and she wishes that she could, she would do it in a second. But for now she'll keep waiting and hoping that he'll come back and experience the only existence he'll ever have.

I hate seeing great actors in mediocre films.

There is some admittedly really gripping and well done drama to be found in "Red Lights." Sygourney's character is full of so much pain, and she is such a dynamite actress, and always has been, that when she's given room to work she'll tear the house down around anyone else in the room. And with a great actor like Cillian Murphy, who actually has very good chemistry with her, there are the makings of some really good stuff here.

As far as De Niro goes, I'll just say what I've said in the past, even though few people share my opinion here - I find him to be just okay. He's never really done that much for me personally as an actor, but I'm not going to say that he's not good. That would be stupid and false. De Niro is a great actor. I'm just not a huge fan of his. And "Red Lights" was pretty much your average De Niro performance. If you like him in other stuff you'll like him in this. One thing he's not is inconsistent.

See that there? Sneering while blind. The guy's a master, I tell you...

So what was it about "Red Lights" that made me start off this entry so? Obviously, it was the ending. Oh my goodness. The ending was rubbish. Pure and simple. If the ending to "Red Lights" was a literal rubbish pile, it would be the finest pile of rubbish one could hope to find. Award winning rubbish, I dare say.

I don't want to get too into what happens, but suffice to say that it approaches Shyamalan-level stupidity. But it's a strange kind of stupid that doesn't really hit you until you do something foolhardy like "think about it for two seconds." Basically what the twist ending adds is a few little things earlier in the film are put into a new context, and a character's motivations are changed, which admittedly makes certain scenes make some additional sense.

However, at the same time that same character's motivations are now completely backwards and scattered on every other scene in the movie, another character's death is now either impossibly coincidental or impossibly nonsensical, and the life work of one of the main characters is now rendered pointless for no good reason. And the only possible conclusion that we are forced to draw from it all is that that character with the twist is an idiot who likes to sabotage and confuse themselves, which is easy since apparently they also have a bad case of Alzheimers.

 They also drop the most emotionally gripping plot thread, the son in the coma, halfway through the movie. Fantastic. -_-

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say "stupid" ending. And what almost makes it worse is that it's forced. This is not a movie that needed a twist. It would have worked far better if there hadn't been one. In fact, that could have been downright gutsy. What does that say about where we are with movies nowadays when a thriller not having a twist is actually a more shocking twist than having one?

Just...stop trying to be clever, Hollywood. You're not very good at it.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Red Lights" is passable for the first 3/4's of the movie. The ending is so ludicrously bad that it ruins everything that came before it. Yeah, it's one of those endings. And I hate to say that because Cillain Murphy and Sygourney Weaver are two of my favorites, but this just wastes them. There may be some enjoyment to be found for some, but I'm not sure by who. Maybe De Niro fans who liked "The Village?"

The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

Some of you who read my blog with any regularity may remember back to earlier this summer when I was threatened with virtual castration for not worshiping the ground that the Holiest of Holies, Our Lord and Savior Himself, Joss Whedon walked on. Ok, those of you who aren't on my Facebook would have no clue about this, but suffice to say it got far uglier than I was wanting or expecting. After my "Avengers" review, I had a lot of people telling me that I was A) insane for considering it "Ok" instead of a perfect flawless gem sent from On High, and that B) I went into the movie wanting to hate it from the beginning, and that I never gave it a fair shot.

Fine. I still stand by A till the end of my days, but maybe there's a little bit of truth in B. But you can't really blame me for not expecting to love it. I like to use this analogy:

If I have a bag of potato chips that expired 40 years ago, and I dust off the bag, open it up, take out a chip and eat it, and my reaction was "Ewww! God, that's disgusting!" but then I proceeded to eat another chip, have the same reaction only this time I'm dry-heaving, and then another chip and another with the same result every time, by the time I got to that sixth potato chip wouldn't it not only be reasonable but expected of me to be a tad apprehensive?

I'm sorry I can't help myself from not liking the way Joss Whedon writes. I'm very, very sorry for that. And I'm very, very sorry that Whedonites get so enraged by someone having even a middling opinion of him. But why should I expect to suddenly and without warning or cause suddenly adore something he wrote, when every single thing he writes has the exact same things in it that bug me? That would make no sense.

But that's not what I came to talk to you about today. Came to talk about a cabin.

Yes, it's "The Cabin In The Woods," the horror film that was getting all kinds of buzz and crazy good reviews all over the place. The phrase "game changer™" was thrown around quite a bit as I recall. That's enough to get me worried any time that's brought up, honestly. But hey, a lot of people I know saw it and loved it. So why not? Let's give this a spin.

AW CRAP.

I knew that intro was there for a reason. Am I really doing this? Am I seriously having to go back into Whedon territory again? Man, every time one of these comes up I'm having to walk on freaking eggshells. I'm just tired of having every critique I make of this guy's work torn apart while people call me a jerk and threaten to revoke my "Nerd Card." No, you know what? I've got that mess laminated, okay? You don't even know the pristine condition my Nerd Card is in. It's still in its original packaging, bitch. You ain't revoking crap.

But before this gets too negative before I even start talking about "The Cabin In The Woods," let me throw this slightly confusing disclaimer up right meow:

I thought it was good. But I disliked it. But I didn't hate it. I don't think.

I could end this entry right there, because that absurd, confusing sentence sums up my feelings on "The Cabin In The Woods," which was that while I thought it was a well made, generally well written movie, my finals thoughts were so freaking jumbled that I honestly have no idea whether or not I liked it. I just came away saying "What the hell did I just watch?" And it wasn't always in the good way.

This is going to be an extraordinarily difficult movie to write about, seeing as the main draw of this movie is the slow reveal of the lingering big question: "What the crap is going on here?" Once you know what's really going down in this movie, I would imagine much of whatever magic contained would be lost, so I'm going to avoid spoilers as much as I can. Let's say that for now, I won't give anything away that the trailer wouldn't have given away already. Eventually I'll have to get into spoilers, but I'll let you know when I do.

The movie begins as a group of five friends who look like they came from casting call of a "Friday the 13th" sequel get together to go to the titular cabin in the woods. They are all extraordinarily stock in the fact that they are all walking stereotypes for the slasher genre. You've got the Jock, the Whore, the Nerd, the Stoner, and the Virgin. But here's the part where the whole "clever bit" comes into play - that is exactly on purpose.

You know, if I were in a group of people so stereotypical, I wouldn't leave the house.

In a control room, there are a bunch of people following these kids, setting them up along the way to be victims in what can only be called a slasher movie, only in real life. These people are literally setting up these kids to be butchered. The "why" is the big question going on throughout "The Cabin In The Woods," which is why I'm really going to have to leave the description at that. Any more would give too much away, which is something I don't want to do.

The cast has Chris Hemsworth as the Jock, and is probably the most recognizable face around as long as you don't count Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford as the two control room guys we follow most of the movie. Nobody else of real note is in it, unless you count Anna Hutchison as the Whore. She was the Yellow Ranger on one of the numerous Power Rangers series. So yeah, there's that. I suppose it's worth noting that "The Cabin In The Woods" contains a scene where you see the Yellow Rangers boobs. That's something I guess.

One person I was excited to see on the cast list was Jodelle Ferland, an actress I really like who tends to always play a creepy young(ish) girl. And what do you know? She's playing a zombie here. And while it was great to see her, why they gave her no lines is beyond me. It's almost like they intentionally wasted talent. There's also another actress I really like who popped in at the end in a surprise cameo, but I wouldn't want to spoil anything. (Protip: Look at the labels at the bottom of this entry.)

Kristen Connolly, playing the Virgin, is the real main character however, and to be honest I liked her. Yeah her part was just as stock as everyone else's, but hey, she was charming and pretty cute as well. So I guess I didn't want to see her die. That means that the movie is doing at least one thing right, because usually I hate characters in slasher movies.

Like this guy.

Oh man. It had to happen at one point, didn't it? The freaking Stoner. You know, it's not that Fran Kranz did a terrible job with this character, it's just that I can't stand that guy. From the minute he shows up, I know that I'm going to have to suffer through endless monologues from them about how "The system is keeping us down!" and "You've got to open your doors of perception, man!" It just gets so old so fast, and I just want them to die quickly as possible. And of course the first time we see the Stoner he is driving a car while smoking from a bong the size of Hulk Hogan's leg. Truly this character will be a delight.

I just miss guys like Shaggy who weren't so militant about "sticking it to the man." He was just mellow, and ate Scooby Snacks. What's so wrong with that?

That also brings me to the spoiler section of the review. I'd advise skipping to the end if you haven't seen "The Cabin In The Woods." Seriously, because you might like it, and I'd hate to ruin anything.

///////BEGIN MASSIVE SPOILERS\\\\\\\\

What it all boils down to, when I have to talk about my real impressions of the movie, was that the story made absolutely no sense to me. At all.

So you've got this group of vaguely defined, government programs around the world that set up and run these sacrifices to these Eldrich Horrors from beyond Space and Time (oh, just call it Cthulhu). My question is: "Why do these Gods care about slasher movie cliches?"

Why the five stereotypes? Why the mythical beasts and movie monster tropes? Why do those suddenly exist in the real world? Are they just there now? Are they created by man? Or the Gods? Why would the Gods know about movie monsters? They watch a lot of HBO, do they? Did they make them as a favor to us and say "Here, use these for our amusement?" Did they have horror movies back before the Dawn of Time? Are the Gods big fans of those? Or are they implying that the slasher movie naturally evolved from these real life TOP SECRET nobody knows about programs? Why in Japan is there the "Scary undead kid with long hair in her eyes" monster? Was that ancient evil always around, but nobody ever knew about it until Japan started making horror movies in the 2000s?

"And lo! Great Cthulhu raised his blasphemous bulk from the black ocean waters and declared Rob Zombie's "Halloween" series to be totally lame."

And you can't tell me that it's just something that mankind did to appease these Gods, because that seems awfully specific to me. It's remarked that the Gods "want them to suffer." Okay. Fine. Take them out to a woodshed and take a blowtorch to them starting from the bottom up. That seems like an adequate amount of suffering to me.

But oh no, the Gods are PICKY about these things. No, the sacrifices have to die in a specific order, according to these human-based horror movie cliches, and if you mess it up, you're boned and the Earth is doomed.

"HAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHA. HA! It's funny because it's referencing other movies. Brilliant.

And once again I ask "WHY?" What possible reason is there for any of that? I'm just saying that it seems like an absurd amount of work to:
1) Set up a space-age technology level underground fortress, 
2) Break all known laws of science and medicine to create these inhuman abominations from Hell 
3) Capture them 
4) Store them 
5) Create a Star Trek level force field around this wooded area 
6) Theatrically stage an entire "Truman Show" style ruse 
7) Abduct and murder five innocent people with movie monsters that are now real somehow 
8) Cover THAT up without being found out and 
9) Do that EVERY YEAR 

Unless that was specifically mandated by the Gods, I would think they would probably stick with the blowtorch in the woodshed.

Of course we all know the reason. It's so directer/co-writer Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon can do Whedon's patented same old "Oh look at me I'm EVER so clever and cheeky" self-referential writing he does in everything he's involved in. And once again, here's where I look like the jerk because I didn't like Lord Whedon's stuff, but there it is. I don't like it, I'm calling BS on it, and I stand by that.

And nowhere is this cheekiness more self-evident than the very end of the movie. I was mostly confused throughout most of "The Cabin In The Woods," but at the end I flat out got mad. The fact that the entirety of mankind is doomed to a horrible, grisly fate just because some baked out of his mind, acid dropping, boneheaded conspiracy nut felt like causally dismissing the human race as "having had a good run" was infuriating to me. And what's worse is that it's honestly really out of character for him in the first place, and especially for the Virgin, who just casually goes along with the "let the Dark Gods destroy us all" plan with little argument.

It's like every Linkin Park song ever written manifested itself into a walking, talking, smoking biped and was finally given The History Eraser Button from "Ren & Stimpy." Of course he's going to be selfish and terrible and stupid and push it because nobody understands him, and it's the only way The Man is going to get off his back. THIS little turd is what finally does us in?!

Somehow...I always knew that guy would be the end of me.

Oh but it's ok that humanity is destroyed. As long as you got to make a statement, that's cool. Asshole.

On the plus side, she's really cute.

///////////END MASSIVE SPOILERS\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

THE BOTTOM LINE - Even though I've bitched about "The Cabin In The Woods" a lot, I'm guessing many people might get a charge out of it, and Whedonites will eat this up with a spoon. Personally I wasn't too impressed with it, and found it to be, like most of the things Whedon writes, full of itself and trying way too hard to be way too clever. That being said, I am actually suggesting you watch this movie on the basis of having a crazy story told in a competent manner. Recommended. (Then come back and read the Massive Spoiler section to see why it's stupid.)

Abduction (2011)

I really don't know how to feel about Taylor Lautner. Although he was god-awful terrible in "Twilight," I can't fault him for that. Everyone was terrible in that except for Billy Burke and Michael Sheen. It's the source material. You can't do anything respectable with it. I do think he has just the slightest bit of potential, given the fact that of the three leads in that so called "saga," he was the only one with more than 2 emotions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not marking any dates in my calender for when his next movie comes out, I'm just saying he has a range greater than a Chia-Pet. That's a legitimate compliment for someone cast in "Twilight."

So how does Taylor's first starring role hold up? Will he surprise us with some acting chops before now hidden by the shlock of the teenybopper material that was holding back huge amounts of raw talent? Or will he once again become an obnoxiously smirking sex symbol for jail-bait and soccer moms to fawn over as he stumbles around removing his shirt at every opportunity? Is this going to be his moment to prove to himself and the world that there is more to the Taylor Lautner Experience than just abs and hair gel? Will he -

Time into film: 4 minutes 32 seconds.

Ok then. Just checking. Matthew McConaughey would be proud.

Seriously, you could forge steel on these abs. This guy is amazing, and as much I complain about it, if I looked like that, I would develop an allergy to shirts, too.


As you may have been able to figure out, "Abduction" was not the gutsy, groundbreaking role that would define Taylor Lautner as a legitimate actor and launch him into the spotlight to run with the big dogs. No, this is just another teenage cash-sink with nothing substantial about it. It exists so that young girls can watch Taylor Lautner try to be Jason Bourne in a setting that isn't dark, gritty, or confusing (or bloody).

Oh and he gets a girlfriend. He has to get a girlfriend. That's of critical import. OMG!

Relationships in spy movies ALWAYS end well.

In order to dumb it down for the kiddies, "Abduction" had to be...well, just a little bit dumb. The idea is that for some reason or another, most likely for his safety, Taylor Lautner's character has been, without his knowledge, raised by foster parents. His dad was a spy or something, as are, without his knowledge, his foster parents. When the truth is revealed through a missing children's website in a rather silly set of coincidences, all of a sudden his identity is out, and people want him dead.


The plot isn't the worst thing I've ever seen. In fact, as silly as it may seem at the moment, generally speaking it does tie itself together well. Most times when something silly comes up, within a few minutes they do back it up with enough evidence to at least make it plausible, and there were a few times when a plot hole I found earlier was fixed by the end. So credit is due to the writers.

The problem, I think, mostly boils down to the fact that it is so blatantly marketed towards a demographic that needs everything clinically NEAT AND TIDY with no challenging ideas or non-happy endings. It broadcast where it was going at all times, and there was never any doubt as to its goals.

You may say that the same could be said of the Bond series, and while I admit that at its core the Bond series has always been about raw entertainment value, I remind you that you're comparing Taylor Lautner to the likes of Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan, and that dog just won't hunt. As much as I don't like them, even the Daniel Craig Bond movies at least were doing something different and dark. This is just lite fluff.

Like there would ever be that many people at a Pittsburgh Pirates game.

One thing that was a plus in the movie's favor was Mikael Nyqvist playing the villain. He was the main guy in the Swedish "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" series, and despite my hatred of those films, I don't have a problem with him. In fact, he's a pretty solid villain, and has a certain quiet menace about him which is quite effective, and in a better, darker film could have been straight up scary. The man's no Ian McShane but he does seem like someone who would do very bad things to you if you pissed him off.

The rest of the admittedly impressive cast is pretty much wasted. Alfred Molina is yelling into a blue-tooth headset for most of the movie, Jason Isaacs dies far too soon to be of any real significance despite being the most interesting and believable character, and Sigourney Weaver is just there to look a little like the Crypt Keeper and depress us when we think back to when she used to be really attractive. And even when they are doing stuff, the dialogue coming from their mouths doesn't really sound natural. They don't sound like they believe what they're saying. But it doesn't really matter because this isn't their show anyways, it's Taylor Lautner and his pecs. For the adults, it's just a paycheck.


Hey, you know what? I just realized something. There's aren't any abductions in this movie! I feel cheated. Unless it's himself Taylor Lautner is abducting. Can you abduct your own self?


The best part of the movie, and the one thing I will give it credit for, is the scene where Taylor Lautner and Mikael Nyqvist meet face to face at a baseball game. The way they are walking down opposite sides of a section and the conversation when they meet up is quite well done, and again, in the hands of a better, darker film could have been quite intense. But because we're watching "Abduction" we know that it's going to end in a chase scene because Taylor Lautner still has to slide down that big glass structure and do some suspiciously CG-looking parkour.

Oh, and one last thing! I'm so sick of these movies that have these kids living in multi-million dollar homes, sporting perfect bodies and teeth, with brains and talent to do anything they want in addition to being really popular at school and having a smoking hot girlfriend having to go to a shrink and BITCH AND MOAN about how they "don't fit in" and how they "feel like they're not in control of their own life."

"The fact that I have a free ride to life pains me to my soul."

Shut the hell up, you little entitled brat.


THE BOTTOM LINE - Are you a 14 year old girl? Then you'll think "Abduction" is awesome. Are you not a 14 year old girl? Then you won't. It didn't make me angry enough to say that I hated it, in fact it was better than I thought it was going to be, it was just so forgettable that it's hard to see the point. Skip it.