Abandon
For about 80% of the way, “Abandon” is a sad and effective thriller and then our hands close on air. If you walk out before the ending, you’ll think it’s better than it is. Or maybe I’m being unfair: A rational ending with a reasonable explanation might have seemed boring. Maybe this is the ending it needed, but it still seems arbitrary as it materializes out of thin air.
Or maybe I’m still being unfair. Maybe it doesn’t materialize from thin air. Students of Ebert’s Bigger Little Movie Glossary will be familiar with the Law of Economy of Characters, which says that no movie introduces a character needlessly, so that the apparently superfluous character is the one to keep an eye on. That rule doesn’t quite apply here, but it comes into play in a reverse sort of way. Think of the Purloined Letter.
Never mind all that. The movie didn’t satisfy me after all, so I can’t recommend it although there’s much to praise in it, starting with Katie Holmes’ performance as Catherine Burke, who plays a smart and articulate student who is on her way to a corporate boardroom if she wants it. She attends some unnamed university (McGill in Montreal provided the locations), has just aced an interview with a big firm, studies hard, doesn’t date much Her ex-boyfriend Embry Langan (Charlie Hunnam) vanished mysteriously two years ago; but then he was one of those weirdo geniuses who was always pulling stunts like that.
So did he disappear himself or was he disappeared? Detective Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) is on the case and although Catherine initially shuts him down she starts to like him Meanwhile and this isn’t as much of a spoiler as you might fear Embry reappears on campus and starts stalking Catherine. That’s all the plot I’ll give you. I want to talk about casting, dialogue and the movie’s general smarts.
This is a movie that convincingly shows us how students talk, think, get wasted, philosophize and hang around on a college campus. I emphasize that because when “The Rules of Attraction” opened last week I questioned its scenes in which topless lesbians were ignored by male students at campus parties. I have here a letter from Joseph Gallo of Auburn, Ala., who says such a sight is not uncommon on his campus. Uh, huh.
The students in “Abandon” talk smart. Especially Catherine. Watch the way Katie Holmes handles that interview with the high-powered corporate recruiters; it could be used as a training film. Watch her body language and word choices when she rejects an advance from her counselor; watch the scene where a friend invites her to attend an “anti-globalization rally.” In an ordinary movie, a line like that would be boilerplate, designed to move the plot to its next event: In this movie, Catherine responds; she has an opinion about anti-globalization.
His authorship and direction is attributed to Stephen Gaghan, an Oscar-winner for the ‘Traffic’ screenplay who now takes on his first directorial job. Gaghan has created characters so good they’re almost wasted in a thriller: Melanie Lynskey’s snotty know-it-all; Zooey Deschanel and Gabrielle Union as best friends with fears and ambitions; material like Deschanel’s drunk scene with a cop that’s just spot-on.
But it is a thriller, so we watch as these human elements, this intelligence that have absorbed us and kept us entertained for two hours, are fed into the wood chipper of the Shocking Climax. How disappointing. This movie doesn’t step wrong until its last scenes — having answered all our questions up to then, it closes on questions even it, I suspect, can’t answer.
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