Abduction

With the recent announcement of the 2011 Oscar nominations, I took a few moments to figure out what 2011 movies I need to watch before the big awards show.  I don't necessarily like to just watch the good movies, though; my annual best-of list includes the best and the worst of the year.  Upon reflection, however, I realized that my hatred for Sucker Punch was skewing this year's list.  I needed another suitable contender for my Worst Movie of the Year award.  But what could possibly contend with the Punch?  And then I remembered Abduction.

I wish this was my reaction to Abduction

Abduction begins with Nathan (Taylor Lautner) being one crayzee dude, riding on the hood of his buddy's truck the entire way to a huge house party.  Whoa, man!  That shows attitude and baditude!  This movie has character development coming out its ears!  And it has great dialogue, too.

Example: "He who smelt it dealt it"

The first line (that isn't "Woooo!") is "Let's go, baby, we got bitches waiting!"  I love when an opening scene gives me an accurate idea of how good the rest of the film will be.  At the party, one of Nathan's friends (Denzel Whitaker) momentarily stops binge drinking to sell some fake IDs to other party-goers.  Wait...what?  Yes, despite the apparent ease with which the characters got alcohol, they are all supposed to be teens.  To be fair, at least the actors playing the teens are all either teens or in their early twenties, so this isn't as obnoxious as it can be in films.  That doesn't really have much to do with the rest of the movie, but it stuck out to me.  Anyway, Nathan is assigned a school project with his neighbor, Karen (Lily "My dad's Phil" Collins), which has them looking into child abductions.  This assignment guides them to the wonders of the interweb, where they find a website that takes child photos and runs them through a computer-generated aging process.  On that website, Nathan and Karen find one abduction victim who is projected to look exactly like Taylor Lautner!  Or, possibly the guy from The Hunger Games.  Or some other teenager with dark hair.  OMG, IDK, ROTFL, WTF.  No wonder Nathan doesn't look like the people who raised him (the fairly pasty Maria Bello and Jason Isaacs); he was abductioned kidnapped!  Nathan contacts the website, but is put off by their odd questions ("What is your location?  What are you wearing?"); it turns out that the website is run by terrorists, who were waiting to find Nathan for some reason.  A few hours later, Nathan's "parents" are dead, and he finds himself on the run from international black ops agents, the CIA, and --- cue dramatic music --- his past.

Cue glower

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  This movie is awful.  It's not just that Taylor Lautner is incapable of mimicking human emotion, there is so much more that is wrong with Abduction.  For starters, let's look at the conspiracy that is in place.  The basic premise here is that Nathan is being raised by people who are not his parents invaluable to international terrorists.  So that whole subplot of Nathan being a child who was abducted...?  That gets debunked pretty early in the film, which makes this one of the least accurately titled movies I can recall.  It's like calling Back to the Future "Late For School."  Still, terrorists want to find Nathan to use him as a bargaining chip so they could get...something.  To find Nathan, they created and actively maintained several websites that claimed lil' Nathan was abducted.  The odds of any of these sites getting a bite from their precise target is infinitesimal, but the sites are actively monitored by a trained black ops agent at all times.  Really?  You don't outsource that to some nerd?  You give that job to the same guy who is leading the first attempt to capture the target, once he is located?  Really?  And what are the odds of the website-monitoring location being close enough to Nathan's house for the monitoring guy to grab a partner, dress up like a cop and show up at Nathan's doorstep within maybe three hours?

Thankfully, Abduction has many instances where that logic seems downright plausible, when compared to the rest of the movie.  Let's say that you're the CIA agent (played by Alfred Molina) tasked with tracking down Nathan before the terrorists.  Ignoring the fact that the CIA probably wouldn't legally lead a manhunt on US soil for a non-terrorist American citizen, let's say that you finally catch up with the boy: what do you do?  Take him to a secure location?  Bug out of the area as quickly as possible, because the terrorists are close behind?  Give him a disguise and help him go underground?

If you answered "D: commandeer a mom-and-pop burger joint and sit the highly valuable target by a large glass window," then you are apparently smart enough to apply for a job in the CIA.  Not surprisingly, "D" turns out to be a poor choice.  The odd logic of Abduction doesn't stop there, but getting any more in-depth will just give me a headache.

The acting in Abduction suffers from the presence of its two leads.  This is the first time I have seen Taylor Lautner on screen for more than a few moments and he is just shockingly bad.  I'll give him some credit; it appears that he can memorize most of his dialogue.  But he's just awful!  You know how most actors will show emotion in their parts, and will carry that emotion from dialogue chunk to dialogue chunk or even (if they're mildly competent) from scene to scene?  That ability is light years beyond what this guy can pull off convincingly.  I hope he invests that Twilight money wisely, because he won't be on the cover of Tiger Beat forever.  Lily Collins isn't as bad as Lautner, but she's still a long way off from being good here.  Granted, her character is written as a typical girl-next-door crush, but she's awkward and whiny and...well...okay, maybe she acts like a real none-too-bright teen would in a similarly outlandish situation.  That still doesn't make her pleasant to watch or explain the caterpillars on her face.

Maybe she's trying to reform Oasis?

None of the adult cast really get enough screen time to balance the awfulness that is Taylor Lautner.  Maria Bello was halfway decent.  Jason Isaacs was surprisingly likable, especially when he was living out the fantasy of Abduction viewers --- he got to beat the crap out of his "son."  Alfred Molina was wasted in a stupid supporting role, while Sigourney Weaver got to play an annoying character in a stupid supporting role.  Michael Nyqvist was suitably foreign and evil-looking as the lead terrorist/bad guy black ops agent, but it takes quite a bit more than that to make an entertaining villain. 

The blank stare of evil

Elisabeth Röhm randomly showed up as Nathan's real mother; surprisingly, this was not a speaking part.  Dermot Mulroney had an uncredited part toward the end, and now that I've seen this movie, I think "uncredited" was the way to go.

Abduction was directed by John "I was relevant in 1991" Singleton, although "directed" might be a strong term.  Sure, part of the fault lies with the paper-thin script from first-time full-feature screenwriter Shawn Christensen, but Singleton is simply a hack here.  Do you like goofy editing (best example: the reveal of the CGI-aged Nathan)?  How about poor use of camera tricks?  And one-dimensional acting?

Literally phoning it in

Yeah, John Singleton delivers on all fronts.  What bothered me most about his direction in this movie was that it is so far from playing to his strengths.  Singleton's best films (Boyz n the Hood and Baby Boy, in my opinion) have a fairly nice but uncharismatic lead actor surrounded by colorful characters; they're dramas that focus on (fairly) small-level dramas that he blows up to big-time drama.  Abduction is an action movie that should have been a tense thriller.  I love the idea of not trusting the people who raised you, but that concept (the best part of this plot) is jettisoned almost immediately for a dull, substandard chase movie.  Oh, and John Singleton can't film an entertaining fight scene to save his life.

Does anything go right in Abduction?  Well...it's not so bad that you spend the movie hating everyone involved.  It's utter crap, though, make no mistake.

Here are a few of my favorite moments from Abduction:

• One of the reasons Nathan is convinced that he was abducted is because he recognized the shirt in the maybe-him child photo on the website.  Okay, fine.  To prove his suspicions are correct, Nathan looks for and finds this unremarkable, fifteen-plus years old shirt in a matter of minutes.  So...A) his "parents" held on to his pre-abducted belongings? B) a teenager knows exactly where his toddler clothes are stored and remembers them, down to the stains? C) his family held on to his toddler clothes instead of giving them away or selling them at garage sales, like every other American family?
• When Nathan asks his "mom" if she is his mother, she says "...No."  Well, that was easy.
• Terrorists looking to kidnap Nathan place a bomb in the kitchen oven, and it is working on a timer.  Maybe they should have acted like they were in a hurry then, hmm?
• Abduction is amazing with the ridiculous amounts of perfect timing and manhours used by the CIA.  A phone call to 911 goes directly to the CIA, without an operator putting Nathan on hold.  Within moments of being spotted on a security camera, underlings are on the scene, giving chase.  And yet...two dumb teenagers manage to avoid capture for days.
• The bad guy threatened to kill all of Nathan's Facebook friends.  
• My wife summed up the first half of the movie with "also, so far, Taylor Lautner's a dick."
• The bad guy steals Nathan's gun by reaching just under his crotch in a quick and sneaky manner.
• The movie ends with a Train song.  Because the movie wasn't bad enough on its own.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

Does this remind anyone else of Iron Maiden's "Run to the Hills"?

It's been a while since I've read a Harry Potter book. I've read them all, but in the intervening years, many of the plot details have faded from my memory. Maybe that's a good thing; when I'm too familiar with a story, I notice any variations acutely and also know every beat of the plot. For the seventh installment in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, that was not an issue. I even completely forgot what a Deathly Hallow was, it's been so long. Isn't it a 70s punk band? Does that make this movie like a Scooby-Doo team-up episode (Harry and the Hallows take on Joker and the Penguin!)? Anyway, it was a nice change to know the gist of the story, but not feel the need to nit-pick every little change made. I have to wonder, though, if more familiarity would have actually helped with this film.

I'm going to make some basic assumptions about you, the reader right now. First off, you are familiar with the wizarding world of Harry Potter. You know that Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) is a good wizard, and he must eventually battle the Bowser of the wizarding world, the evil Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes). Harry is accompanied primarily by his friends Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), and frequently aided by his school's headmaster (and Voldemort's only magical equal), Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon).

Now, here's a quick catch-up on the series. Unfortunately, Dumbledore was killed at the end of the last Harry Potter. Voldemort's bad guys are running the wizarding world through terror and murder, which are admittedly pretty non-magical ways to rule anybody; only Harry and his friends know how to stop Voldemort. Oh...you want to know, too? Well, Voldemort (let's call him Morty for short), in order to gain immortality, split his soul into six parts and hid them inside ordinary items. As long as one of these Horcruxes exists, so does Morty. The good news is that, through the events of earlier movies, two Horcruxes have already been destroyed. The bad news is that the other four could be anything, anywhere, and the longer it takes to find (and figure out how to destroy) these things, the more likely it is that Morty and his minions will kill Harry, removing the last viable threat from Morty's reign of terror.

This movie marks a distinct departure for Harry and his friends. Instead of going to Hogwart's and finishing their last year of wizarding school, they go on the lam. Morty's men are hunting them, and they need to lie low and run when they are found. That means that they stay outside of wizard communities and spend some time in London before ultimately settling on a series of desolate camping grounds scattered throughout England. As it turns out, without Dumbledore's help, these kids are pretty helpless. Like, you know, kids. They know that they need to find Horcruxes, but they only manage to find one for this entire movie. It takes them the entire movie to learn how to destroy it, too. Meanwhile, Morty spends his time searching for a special magic wand, one that will kill Harry. Things begin to fire on all cylinders when Harry and his friends get over their teenage attitudes and work together to solve their problems. Of course, that only gets you so far if you get captured by Morty's people...

The biggest difference between The Deathly Hallows and any of the preceding chapters is the tone. Gone is the sense of wonder at magic. That is replaced by a hopelessness that becomes the defining tone of the film. We're used to seeing Harry and his friends encounter a puzzle and solve it within two hours (even though those two hours encompass their entire school year). Seeing them stuck, with no promising leads, is surprising to see on the big screen; I liked this choice, because it actually makes their tasks seem suitably difficult for a lead-up to the inevitable big wizard fight. However, the movie can drag at points when nothing seems to be happening. It is at these moments, though, where we get to see how well these young actors have developed over the years. Director David Yates leaves a lot of moments as better shown than told, which is especially surprising in a family film (even if it is rated PG-13, this is a movie that young fans will grow into), a genre that usually leaves subtlety locked in the car with the window cracked. His confidence pays off pretty well; Emma Watson is still the class act of the bunch, but Daniel Radcliffe was pretty good and Rupert Grint looks like he might be a pretty good comedic actor at some point, even if he is so very, very ugly. This movie relies more on these three to carry the acting load than any other Potter film, with special effects and the always wonderful adult supporting cast making only occasional appearances.

The film is certainly not without fault. You can justly criticize this movie for having very little happen in its two-plus hours running time; actually, many things happen, but very little to advance the larger plot of Harry vs. Morty. I've also heard people complaining about an abrupt ending. It's not abrupt; the action leading up to the ending is sudden, when compared to the pace of the rest of the film, but the ending makes sense and I was okay with it.

What I didn't like about this film was the fact that it is clearly a set-up film. I actually enjoyed this movie --- it had action, humor, and several sad moments, even if it was slow --- and I think it did a fantastic job setting up The Deathly Hallows: Part 2, especially with the way it built up Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) as a prime villain. That doesn't make this a strong movie on its own, though. While I was okay with the ending, it isn't as strong or final as the other Potter endings; it definitely feels like a "switch to disc 2" moment. And that's too bad, because I think that, if they could have found a good stopping point, this could have been the awesome downer movie of the series; they are trying hard to be the wizard version of The Empire Strikes Back, where the heroes have had bad news all day, and are getting ready to attack those stupid Ewoks. It doesn't quite hit the same note of "we've taken their best shots, now it's our turn" feel, though. I also felt that this movie had scenes where you were just attacked by cameo appearances. Of the adults, only Bill Nighy and Ralph Fiennes had decent screen time, with Helena Bonham Carter, Toby Jones (as a voice) and Rhys Ifans also making good with their brief appearances. Alan Rickman, Jason Isaacs, Michael Gambon, Peter Mullan, Robbie Coltrane, Brendan Gleeson, David Thewlis, John Hurt, Imedla Staunton, David O'Hara, and Warwick Davis were all just flashes on the screen. Sadly, most of these (for the most part) very respectable actors were limited to less that four lines and maybe one visible emotion. Even the other child actors, like Tom Felton, Clemence Poesy and Bonnie Wright were barely given any time to much of anything. This barrage of familiar faces and characters was sometimes distracting for me, as I searched my memory to identify certain characters or recall why someone was in the position they were in (I'm still not sure why the Malfoys were on Morty's bad side).

There was a lot that I really enjoyed, though. I really liked Ben Hibbon's dark and visually interesting animated tale that explained just what the hell a Deathly Hallow is. I liked the supporting cast, even when their input was limited. I thought the emotional scenes were handled better than in any previous Harry Potter, and that includes an extended sequence of watching them mourn an ugly CGI character, which could have been hilarious if it was handled poorly. And this movie did what it set out to do (set up the final film), and it did it well. Does this story need to be two movies long? After all, the last three movies were also based on enormous books. I don't know, but I guess we'll see when Part 2 comes out this summer. As it stands right now, though, I expect that this film (both parts together) will prove to be like any classic double album in rock; bloated and long-winded, and certainly with some moments that could have been left out, but it's the White Album, what are you gonna do?

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"Second verse / Same as the first / A little bit louder / And a little bit worse!"  Those lyrics belong to any number of children's songs, none of which I can recall right now, and I felt them oddly appropriate for the second installment in the Harry Potter franchise.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets follows Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), and that ginger kid (Rupert Grint) as they try to uncover the annual Bad Thing that is plaguing Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year.

It begins with a house elf, Dobby (CGI voiced by Toby Jones), trying to prevent Harry from going back to school.  Dobby's master is planning some mean stuff and Dobby wants to help Harry Potter; the only problem is that house elves cannot say bad things about their owners, so he cannot give Harry an explicit warning.  Thanks, Dobby, you're worthless.  And you remind me of Fergie.  Harry is eventually reunited with his friends and returns to school.  However, someone is doing weird stuff at Hogwarts.  Messages are being written on the walls with blood, claiming that the heir of Slytherin has returned and opened the Chamber of Secrets.  If that makes no sense to you, I suggest you read the book because I don't want to get into the history of Hogwarts right now.  Along with the messages on the wall, students, pets and ghosts are being found petrified, with no clues as to what could be the culprit.  I guess it's up to Harry and friends to solve the mystery of the haunted amusement park!  I mean, discover the Chamber of Secrets and the, um, secrets it holds.

So what does Harry Potter 2.0 have to offer?  Well, it gives the villainous Malfoy family more screen time.  Draco (Tom Felton) and his father, Lucius (Jasoc Isaacs), are suitably insufferable, and both are welcome foils to the do-gooding Potter crew.  Lucius, in particular, is nice and evil.  We meet the evil Voldemort again and learn some of his history.  We get to see more of Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), who will be important in later movies; Wright's performance isn't great, but it's difficult to be hard on a ten year-old.  Well, it's really not, but it feels mean.  This film also introduces the Whomping Willow and polyjuice potion, both of which will be used in later movies.  And that's about it.  Huh.  I guess this movie just sets up later installments more than anything else.

Chris Columbus directs this movie, as he did the first, and the results are basically the same.  He succeeds with the film's biggest obstacle: child actors.  The kids have gotten a little better at acting, although Emma Watson is still clearly the best out of the bunch.  The supporting cast is again stellar, with Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris and Robbie Coltrane all maintaining the same high quality they did the last time out.  The addition of Kenneth Branagh as an egotistical teacher was a wonderful idea, and he is perfect in the part.  The special effects look better this time around and the little details that were not captured in the first film are done right in this one.  Honestly, since this story is so similar to the first movie, it feels like they just smoothed out the rough edges and did the same thing as last time, but better.

That is the big problem, of course.  The Chamber of Secrets is handicapped by its similarity to The Sorcerer's Stone.  I think it is obvious that this is the better film; the acting is better, the threat is more frightening, the special effects are better, and we're not wasting time with an origin story.  However, the plot structure (Harry sees a problem, Harry gets educated on wizarding stuff, Harry fights Voldemort) is annoyingly similar to the first movie.  This is also true of the book, but I actually like the movie better because you can see the young cast's growth as actors.  Is it fair to criticize a movie for being similar to its prequel, when the source material has the same problem?  Yes, it is.  Nevertheless, this movie does a great job at capturing the wonder and possibility of a magical world, and doing so in a way that will appeal to children.  If the story was a little better (read: less similar to Volume 1), this would be a clear classic.  As it stands, though, it is still in good company.

Green Zone

Yeah, I know...you were really hoping that Green Zone would be a true-story Bourne movie, right?  It's got Matt Damon as the lead and Paul Greengrass directing, so that's not a bad assumption, actually.  Greengrass even mimics the cinematography from The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, so the look and feel of this film matches his earlier work.  Hell, this is even a government conspiracy movie, too!  Unfortunately, Green Zone is based on the non-fiction book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City.  I don't mean to demean the book, but any movie based on a non-fiction account of anything from the Iraq war is going to be heavy on government screw-ups and relatively light on the awesome hand-to-hand combat and driving sequences that helped make the Bourne series so unique.

That comparison may seem unfair, but it's the filmmaker's own fault.  Green Zone is essentially a political conspiracy movie disguised as an action movie.  If they wanted this to be a conspiracy movie, that's cool.  I'm down for some convoluted conspiracy plots.  This film throws in a decent amount of war movie-type shootouts, though, so the action and the political intrigue sometimes seem disjointed.

Since the movie is very plot-driven, with all the twists and turns that implies, I don't want to give away any spoilers; I'll just give a quick recap.  Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) is in charge of a US squad looking to capture Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in 2003 Iraq, right around the time where President Bush gave his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech.  As you might have heard, anyone looking for WMDs in Iraq was going to go home disappointed, and this film is about that.  After finding zip, zero, and nada for a while, Miller begins to openly question the value of the military's intelligence.  This movie deserves some credit for not once making any "oxymoron" comments about military intelligence, despite several obvious opportunities to do so.  Miller begins to dig for the truth behind the intelligence being supplied to the military.  On his side, he has CIA agent Martin Brown (Brendan Gleeson), a local Iraqi man that is willing to bastardize his given name and be called "Freddie" so stupid Americans don't mispronounce his given name (Khalid Abdalla), and a Wall Street Journal correspondent (Amy Ryan).  On the "Truth?  You can't handle the truth!" side, we have Iraq's resident Pentagon guy, Clark Poundstone (Greg Kinnear), Iraqi General Mohammed Al-Rawi (Yigal Naor), and a Special Ops guy, Briggs (the always evil Jason Isaacs).  Of course, nothing is as simple as Miller would like, so he chooses to bypass the chain of command and wage a one man campaign to capture the truth.

Side note: bypassing military chain of command in military situations has absolutely no negative repercussions, as long as you are Matt Damon.

 As far as the cast goes, almost everyone does a solid job.  I like Damon, even when his role requires him to look frustrated or impassive for an entire movie.  Brendan Gleeson and Jason Isaacs are always entertaining character actors, and they don't disappoint here.  I wasn't familiar with Khalid Abdalla or Yigal Naor, but I thought both did well with surprisingly complex supporting roles.  I was not impressed with Amy Ryan or Greg Kinnear, though.  Ryan's seemingly indifferent performance might be an accurate representation of a journalist (I'll give her the benefit of the doubt), but it makes for a boring character to watch.  Kinnear had the opportunity to play a slimy politician and he does that well.  He kind of overdoes it, though; I'm pretty sure I've seen Cobra Commander display more human complexity than Kinnear did here.

The directing was fine, too.  I like Paul Greengrass as a director.  I liked how the movie looked (kind of gritty) and the pacing of the action.  He was able to capture some pretty good action sequences, as you might expect.  Greengrass is able to make complex plots understandable with his direction, and that was a key to enjoying this movie.

Despite a lot of quality ingredients making up this movie, they don't quite add up.  Part of that is due to the plot and part is due to the presentation.  The plot is effective as a suspense/political intrigue movie.  There's just one problem: the audience already knows that there were no WMDs in Iraq.  Well, maybe I'm wrong...you know the P.T. Barnum quote: “You will never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”  Let's pretend that you don't know about the WMDs.  Even then, the big reveal doesn't deliver the dramatic punch that you would expect it to.  When Miller confronts the person responsible, he is essentially blown off, and the eventual ending is missing the catharsis that the story demands.  Obviously, the hero is going to do something heroic, right?  Even after Miller makes his big play, I was left unsatisfied.

Presenting this movie as a thinly-veiled fictional story about our recent past was probably not the way to go, either.  If they had just mentioned that the names of the people involved have been changed, etc., etc., then the lack of catharsis would be more understandable.  Sometimes, real life doesn't provide the ending you want.  Still, even if the filmmakers had played up the "true story" angle, it wouldn't explain the lack of consequences shown in the film.  I don't want to give anything away, but when the movie ended, I was waiting for some sort of postscript to tell what happened to who after the plot is resolved.  But nothing is added and I was left with the impression that nothing had changed.  That's a bad feeling to have after watching a conspiracy movie. 

This movie was well made and I enjoyed it while I watched.  I just feel that the conclusion was lacking.  That might not be a huge problem for a comedy, but plot-driven movies need to have effective resolutions.  I think the flat-out evil portrayal of Kinnear's Pentagon insider is overly simplistic (I'm fine with him being evil, but at least have him justify his actions!) and Miller's actions had several severe consequences that are brushed over.  I think this is an important story, but it is told in a good-guy vs. bad-guy way that cheapens the message.  Unless the message is "Screenwriters: Stay in school until you cover 'Satisfactory endings' in class."