Abduction

Year: 2011
Genre: Action
Director: John Singleton

Plot: A teenager discovers that the couple who raised him aren't his real parents, right before they are gunned down by mysterious folks, who plan on using him to get to his real father.

The gist: Abduction is basically an attempt to create a younger version of Jason Bourne, minus the amnesia stuff. Taylor Lautner plays Nathan, a kid who has to figure out who is after him and what they want with him, while dragging the lovely Lily Collins along.

This film on a whole is a strict, by the numbers thriller where nearly everything is stuff you've already seen someplace else, and executed better elsewhere too.


The good: Lautner, to his credit, actually does better here than being Jacob Black in the Twilight films, even though Nathan is almost a carbon copy of Jacob. What makes him better here is that he isn't so annoying. And Lily Collins is always nice to look at, so that's a plus.

The bad: The other more established actors like Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs, Alfred Molina and Maria Bello are stuck being the supporting cast, which is a huge waste of their talent. This film is probably a paycheck gig for them. The action sequences are mostly dull, though the fight scene between Lautner and a bad guy in a train cabin isn't too bad. The climax is non existent and the plot too predictable.


Verdict: I probably tolerated this film better than most people, but I still wouldn't recommend it. You're better off watching the Bourne films. (2.5/5)

Unbreakable

Year: 2000
Genre: Mystery / Drama
Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Plot: The only survivor of a horrific train crash tries to figure out why he survived with the help of an eccentric comic book collector.


The gist: This film is M Night Shyamalan's tribute to comic book heroes, and it's clear he went to great lengths to make it stand out. Like most of his work, Unbreakable is mostly quiet and deliberately slow, but it never really gets dull, which is commendable.

Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson play off each other very well, the former as a security guard with marriage problems and the latter as a strange man with a rare condition revolving around brittle bones. Together they lead the story on discovering each other's identities, the answer to that being the obligatory Shyamalan twist.


The good: The cast perform very well. Besides Willis and Jackson, special mention goes to Robin Wright and Spencer Treat Clark as Willis' wife and son respectively. Credit must also be given to Eduardo Serra for his great camerawork, like using reflections every now and then to focus on his performers, as well as using contrasting colors to differentiate between certain people.


The bad: If you attempt to compare this to The Sixth Sense, you'll find this film a bit wanting. It is well made, but falls a bit short to that pioneering Shyamalan classic.


Verdict: Unbreakable is a solid film that will keep you engaged if you let it do so. (3.5/5)