Abandon
|
Our Price: $15.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.14 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Canada
Movie Reviews of Abandon
Movie Review: So-so mystery!
Summary: 3 Stars
If this movie was a final exam, it would get about a C-. Try as I might, I just couldn't understand why every man in the movie was infatuated by Katie Holmes. The flashback scenes got really old really fast. The one part of the movie I really enjoyed was the party they went to, they got the college party scene down pat. Rent this movie before you buy, for sure.Movie Review: I thought I knew the ending but I was wrong...
Summary: 3 Stars
A psychological thriller that might related to any of us of being abandon.... I thought I knew the ending but I was wrong. Not a very fast pace movie but it got me at the end. 2.5 out of 5.Movie Review: Better off as a one hour TV Episode
Summary: 2 Stars
**THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
Detective Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) is the sad-sack protagonist of 'Abandon' (which should have been more aptly named 'Abandoned'). Handler has just returned to his assignment on the police force after being suspended (presumably) for a DWI or drinking on the job. Handler's supervisor won't allow him to use a squad car and wants to break him in slowly so he assigns Handler to a missing person's case. What's so unusual about this case is that the missing person in question, Embry Larkin, an artsy but rebellious college student, disappeared two years ago. It seems unlikely that a detective (even one who is returning after a suspension) would be assigned to a missing person's case (especially one that is two years old) since typically missing person's cases are not considered priority matters for a police
investigation.
Nonetheless, Handler focuses his attention on Embry's last girlfriend at the college, Katie Burke (played by Katie Holmes). Katie at first appears to be a bright Ph.D. student who's about to finish her dissertation and apply for a high-powered corporate job at a successful consulting firm. After awhile, Katie starts believing that she's been seeing Embry pop up around campus. The film's scenarist, Stephen Gaghan (of Syriana fame), intentionally keeps you in the dark until the film's end as to whether these Embry sightings are merely figments of Katie's imagination or actual appearances by the former boyfriend.
The story unfortunately drags on much too long with Katie's fleeting glimpses of Embry. Nothing much happens in terms of the plot until another one of Katie's long-term suitors, Harrison Hobart, disappears. Katie's confrontations with Embry become more aggressive as she accuses him of having a hand in Harrison's disappearance. Katie is becoming more unhinged and starts seeing a shrink to cope with the disturbing confrontations she's been having with Embry.
Meanwhile, the clueless detective Handler has not been acting like a very good detective. Instead of being suspicious of all possible suspects (including Katie), he seems to accept everything she tells him at face value. As it turns out, Handler has been attending AA meetings and soon decides that police work is not for him so he hands in his badge. But just as he has resigned, he receives some important news from a crime lab buddy who informs him that a note Katie claimed she had recently received from Embry was actually two years old.
Before the film's climax, Harrison pops up at the college graduation and the audience learns that his disappearance had nothing to do with foul play on Embry's part (Harrison simply lost his way while hiking in a State Park). Fortunately for him, he already decided to walk away from Katie. But former detective Handler is not so lucky. He already had an intimate moment with the psycho college co-ed. Now that it's finally dawned on him that Katie has been imagining all these
encounters with Embry, he tells her that he doesn't want to go away with her as they previously had planned.
Abandon's conclusion takes place in an abandoned building near campus. In a flashback we now see what actually happened: Embry got sick of Katie and told her that he was planning to leave her so she knocked him over the head with a cement block and he falls into a pool of water, dead. The same fate awaits former Detective Handler: we see him floating dead with a bashed head in the grimy pool of water along with Embry's two year old skeleton.
Abandon has some excellent cinematography, capable acting and a brooding score resulting in a nice, overall 'noirish' feel. But the story does not develop organically. It was designed primarily to showcase its 'twist ending'. Ultimately why should we really care about Katie, the film's antagonist? Does she really stand out as a unique 'femme fatale'? Not really. Sure there are a few good scenes suggesting that she's good at manipulating people (the job interview for example)
but there are way too many of those clichéd childhood flashbacks suggesting parental abuse as well the aforementioned multiple 'Embry' sightings which slow the story down considerably. The same goes for Detective Handler, the protagonist, who never seems to be able to put two and two together. It's hard to like a protagonist who is so passive and pathetic.
After watching Abandon for the first time, I was forced to go back and watch it again just to try and refresh my memory as to the important plot points. So many of the scenes simply are not memorable; they tend to blend into one another. Abandon's story feels more like an hour-long TV episode stretched out to fulfill the requirements of a feature film. Had it been done on TV, it would have been much more effective.
Movie Review: Okay, but not memorable
Summary: 2 Stars
Summary:Katie Burke (Katie Holmes) is a star student at a prestigious Ivy League university. She is supported by well-deserved scholarships and seems to be able to pick and choose whom she will date. However, when she was a young undergraduate student she wasn't quite as well known and felt somewhat lucky to be noticed by and eventually dating Embry Larkin (Charlie Hunnam), who happens to be the most popular and controversial guy on campus.
Most of the information we have on their relationship comes out as backstory flashbacks. The current story is actually the meeting of Katie with Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt), a police officer who has been assigned to find Embry who disappeared several years previously.
When Wade begins questioning Katie two things happen: (1) She begins seeing Embry again and he seems to be stalking her, and (2) She falls in love with Wade.
But what we don't realize is that Katie's claim that Embry disappeared and she doesn't know where he is is actually a result of her having repressed the fact that she killed him when he tried to leave her. As it turns out, she does the same thing to Wade and the movie ends by setting her up to do it again. Apparently Katie, though intelligent and attractive, has a hard time being 'abandoned', thus the name of the film.
My Comments:
The story was kind of interesting, but not particularly convincing. The first problem is that the title which is supposedly the motivation of the killings, Katie's sense of abandonment, is very poorly developed. Supposedly it stems from her father leaving her at a young age, but this is only very briefly mentioned despite employing a psychiatrist to delve into her past. I ended up thinking it all rather silly.
The other problem I had with the story is that it tried to incorporate several red herrings and other characters that never really ended up being developed satisfactorily. Also, none of the characters were really convincing, but I'll get into that below.
As for the acting, I had a major problem here. First, though I'm not really blaming Charlie Hunnam for his portrayal of Embry Larkin, I thought the character was ridiculously portrayed and a horrible stereotype. He tried so hard to be an artistic romantic that it came across as being pathetically cheesy. Every time he came on the screen I wanted to scream, "Please don't pretend to be some radical artist; just be yourself." Of course it didn't work and by the end of the movie I was sick of seeing him.
Katie Holmes and Benjamin Bratt weren't too bad. But as noted above, the characters they were given to portray were too complex to be satisfactorily developed during the course of the movie. Holmes has too many problems and too many relationships to work through them all and Bratt's combination of alcoholism and bringing his work/witnesses home to sleep with them just didn't work. They tried pretty hard, but just by their nature they left me with an unsatisfied feeling.
Overall, the movie had potential but seemed to try too hard to be artistic and it was fairly apparent that this was a first film for the director, straight out of film school. It did make me want to see what was going to happen next, but when I found out, I wasn't very satisfied.
Movie Review: Three Misused Stars
Summary: 2 Stars
Oh Charlie! You are so great in UNDECLARED and here, in ABANDON, they must have pulled you off the set of UNDECLARED, not even giving you a moment to change your hairdo by a single curl, and wearing the same outfits you wear as the egotistical British roommate in the sitcom, and they ask you to adopt an American accent and play a driven, high modernist composer of all things, so ludicrous. No one who watches the movie believes that Katie Holmes' character could fall for you because you're so pretentious and shallow. And the name of your character--"Embry Larkin"! We have a Larkin Street here in San Francisco... but mostly every time I heard the name Embry I wondered if they call you "Embryo" as a pet name.
And Katie? Why take a part in which your character's name is the same as your own? Is this supposed to be a Robert Altman sort of Pirandello exercise? You're on the screen, looking earnest, and a voice interrupts you saying, "Katie?" And you look up, blush, and say, "Yes"? Is it acting or is it real life?
And watching those scenes now where Katie meets with her understanding, lecherous psychiatrist are just mindblowing now that everyone knows you and Tom are totally against psychiatrists and want to crush them! Katie delivers a "crushing" putdown to Tony Goldwyn, the poor actor playing the psychiatrist, that ties right in with Hubbard's dismissal of psychiatry--was it planned that way? Weren't you still with Chris Klein when you filmed ABANDON? Or was this some sort of psychic pipeline into the future--a future in which the bodies of psychiatrists lie mangled, or dripping blood from lampposts? And Tony Goldwyn of all people! Of course I thought it was "him" was who the killer. Nobody who saw GHOST with Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze could ever fully trust him again. Good casting! Except for you and Charlie. And Benjamin Bratt, you look so bruised and puffy in this film it's like you got out of three rounds with Rocky Marciano and then bobbed up in front of the film cameras--get him a bag of ice to put on his poor face!