Abduction

A sociology project on the Internet presence of kidnapped kids (?) affords the recently grounded Nathan (Taylor Lautner) some quality time with longtime girl-across-the-street crush Karen (Lily Collins) in Abduction, a blockhead espionage thriller from director-for-hire John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood). Mom (Maria Bello) has closed the door behind her, so Nathan and Karen are alone with the motocross posters and conspicuously propped-up snowboards. The Web soon yields a missing-person rendering of Lautner’s face—uncannily age-adjusted from a photo of Nathan as a young child—giving the self-described “stranger in my own life” something to really think about: Who are his real parents? And did “Dad” (Jason Isaacs) mean him actual harm when they beat the crap out of each other in the backyard? Nathan immediately avails himself of the site’s live-chat feature (we glimpse the man behind the interface, a human tattoo in Brighton Beach) and soon finds himself on the run with Karen after his house explodes, caught in the middle of a skirmish involving rival black-ops agents, the CIA (represented by Alfred Molina), and a guardian therapist (Sigourney Weaver). Most of this takes place in and around Pittsburgh, and none of it has anything to do with abduction. Between chases and Bourne-like bursts of violence, Lautner gets emotional, restating the obvious: “I just saw my parents get murdered in front of my eyes,” he says at one point, looking very much like a stranger in his own performance.