The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Opening
shot: A car zooms down a tree lined road. A cute guy is seated on the front
windshield laughing his head off, yelling at the driver to go faster. They
reach the party. We get a round of fist bumps and a chorus of ‘Man, you’re so
crazy!’ followed by ‘I totally am, bro!’ and a whole lot of beer. Windshield
guy, Nathan (Lautner), wakes up the next morning shirtless and on the lawn where
his dad finds him, then takes him home and forces him to spar with him. This
little scene sets the film’s mood perfectly. It says, ‘I am made for 15-year-old
boys; I am a mash-up of everything they may find cool.’

The
first thing you discover about Nathan is that he really isn’t the sharpest tool
in the box. He’s a brown guy raised by white, blonde-haired and blue-eyed
parents without ever questioning his parentage or suspecting anything. While
working on a school paper with his girlfriend Karen (Collins), he discovers his
picture on a missing kids’ website and thus discovers that his parents aren’t
biologically related to him.

Before he has time to fully process this fact, a
bunch of guys bust into his house, murdering his parents and forcing both him
and Karen to flee for their lives. Hot on their heels are both the CIA and
Koszlow (Nyqvist), the guy who ordered the hit on his parents. They’re both
after a top-secret encrypted list that Nathan has courtesy
of his estranged biological father. 

Don’t
expect much on the acting front; at least not from Lautner and Collins. When
Lautner isn’t kicking ass, he’s lolling around looking extremely awkward,
possibly reading his lines off of a teleprompter. Nyqvist, who was so thoroughly
badass in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
trilogy, comes off as a rather campy caricature of a villain.

The film suffers from an embarrassing script full of laughably bad lines, worn out clichés
and huge plot holes. For example, both the villains and the CIA repeatedly intercept
Nathan’s calls on his mobile phone; yet the plans that he makes with his friend
via the same exact mobile phone are never intercepted and allow him to stay one
step ahead of his pursuers. Sigourney Weaver, playing Nathan’s shrink and an
undercover ex-CIA agent, is pretty much the only character with a shred of a
soul. 

The
only possible reason for this film’s existence is that Hollywood’s
powers-that-be are attempting to turn Taylor Lautner into a fully-fledged action
hero; a teenage Jason Statham if you will. He actually doesn’t do a half-bad
job on those terms; he’s definitely at his most animated and engaging when he’s
running for his life or beating the crap out of people. Either way, the only
thing that Abduction has going for it
is the fight scenes; and the fact remains that not even its very talented
supporting cast can salvage the rest.