Who's Dave Z?
Music CDs
|
ABANDON Abandon is one of those movies that tricks you into thinking you saw a good movie at the end when, in fact, all you saw was a good ending. The lovely Katie Holmes’ latest feature is a poorly directed, poorly written bore fest with a masterful ending.
The film follows the stressed out exploits of Catherine Burke (Holmes),
a college student nearing graduation and feeling all the pressures that go
along with trying to finish her thesis paper, graduating and then finding a
job. Things get even more
complicated for Burke when Detective Wade Handler, played by Benjamin Bratt,
shows up on campus to investigate the disappearance of a student, Embry Langan
(Heath Ledge...I mean, Charlie Hunnam), who just happens to have been a former
boyfriend of hers. Supposedly, the
enigmatic, self-loving Langan boosted off to It’s an uninteresting premise to begin with and I should have known better than to throw down $7.00 to see this stinker in the first place. The writer asks us to believe that Holmes’ character would be in some kind of real danger from the reappearance of her former boyfriend but gives us absolutely no reason to fear him. The would-be suspense of this film just ends up coming off as silly; I found myself laughing and asking “Why would any sane person do that?” more often than screaming at the “scary” moments of the film. Aside from a very stylish scene where the use of a strobe light was employed, the direction of Traffic writer Stephen Gaghan is terrible. The film suffers from pacing problems, scenes and events that don’t make much sense and a few cuts that made me wonder if I had accidentally fallen asleep and woke up five or ten minutes later. An Oscar winning screen writer does not a good director make. Predictability was another thing I found prominent in this “thriller”. I was immediately able to pick out all the men that Burke would be sleeping with as soon as they showed up. There were also several points during the feature where I was able to lean over and warn the girl next to me to get ready to jump. Despite all the flaws, I did think the cast did a wonderful job of making the crap they were given seem less crappy. Hunnam’s narcissistic antics were quite entertaining to watch as well as Melanie Lynskey’s much needed comic relief as Mousy Julie. Benjamin Bratt also did an excellent job as the ex-alcoholic Detective Handler but I’m surprised that he’s not getting better roles thrown his way. Abandon is one of those films you want to avoid until it comes out on DVD so you can rent it, watch the ending, maybe hit some special features and return it as soon as possible. 97% of it is crap but the ending really is worth seeing and hey, it’s got a nice shot of Katie Holmes wearing nothing but her unmentionables. -Steve Korfhage-
| ||||||||
