| ABANDON Rating:   Directors: Stephen Gaghan Producer: Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Lynda Obst,Edward Zwick Writer: Stephen Gaghan Director of Photography: Matthew Libatique Cast: Katie Holmes, Benjamin Bratt, Zooey Deschanel, Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew |
 Click the photo to buy merchandise from Abandon |
Review by: Warren
Curry
10/20/02
Stephen Gaghan won a well-deserved Oscar a few years back for writing the fantastically complex and provocative Traffic. He now returns with his directorial debut, for which he also penned the script, Abandon. What am I getting at? Nothing, except that "a few years" in Hollywood time may as well be an eternity -- in this case, anyway.
Abandon is a thriller without any thrills; a surprisingly uninvolving story that's void of any tension. The film follows the mounting turmoil that is afflicting Katie Burke (Katie Holmes), a senior at an upper crust Northeastern college. Katie comes from a relatively humble background, but her academic accomplishments have made her first in line to land a job at a prestigious firm in New York City upon graduation. Her mind is matched every bit by her physical beauty, and it appears that all men who cross her path are incredibly smitten by her charms.
One such man is police detective Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt), a recovering alcoholic, who has been assigned to investigate the case of a missing person named Embry Langan (Charlie Hunnam). Embry, you see, is Katie's ex-boyfriend, who devastated the woman's world when he ended their relationship two years earlier. As Handler begins to look into the case more deeply, Katie finds that Embry has returned to campus and has also begun stalking her. But every time the mysterious man confronts Katie, he vanishes without a trace moments later. Is Katie really being tormented, or have the pressures of being a ravishing, straight A, heartbroken college student gotten the best of her?
I find Katie Holmes every bit as attractive as the next heterosexual male, but at this point in her career she is ill equipped to carry the lead role in a movie. Her performance lacks any sort of personality and is every bit as flat as the story. Her character develops into cartoon territory when it becomes apparent that no man has the discipline to not fall head over heels for Katie. By the film's end, I was half expecting a line comprised of Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon, Brett Favre and Chris Elliot (sores on his face and all) to be assembled outside of her dorm room, waiting for a chance to express their undying love. In a year when Holmes' Dawson Creek co-stars Michelle Williams (exceptional in Me Without You) and James Van Der Beek (receiving accolades for his work in The Rules of Attraction) marked themselves as serious actors, the actress has been left behind in the abyss of generic young Hollywood faces. I'm not too familiar with the work of Benjamin Bratt (i.e. I haven't watched much television since Silver Spoons was cancelled), but he's very good here. Almost the antithesis of Holmes' performance, Bratt oozes a natural charisma and injects life into the movie every time he's on screen. This, of course, makes any chemistry between Wade and Katie non-existent -- a big problem when romance factors into the equation. Zooey Deschanel, who plays one of Katie's closest friends, and is coming off an amusing performance in The Good Girl, is just kind of a nuisance.
In our M. Night Shyamalan-informed film culture, it seems that every thriller is forced to try to top one another when it comes to the surprise ending, and Abandon puts forth its best effort. Admittedly, I didn't see it coming, but that doesn't mean it worked. Abandon is one of those films that leaves you scratching your head wondering how it could've ever been given the go ahead for production. It is so middle-of-the-road and so lacking any ambition that its sheer facelessness just leaves you numb; a completely rote telling of a totally uninspired story.
Gaghan does nothing to distinguish himself as a director (you can tell he was fighting off impulses to go for a more flamboyant approach), and one has to wonder if he wrote this script the morning following a night of Oscar celebration, while trying to shake off the effects of too much good cheer. It's not smart, not suspenseful and sure as hell not entertaining. Trust me, you have much better things to do with two hours of your life than sit through this bore.
(A Paramount Pictures release. Opened
wide on October 18.)
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