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He puts abs in 'Abduction'

Perhaps Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner should get a series of films with titles that make a pun on his famous abs. Abilene Nights? Abashedly Yours? Abacus Calculation?

Perhaps Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner should get a series of films with titles that make a pun on his famous abs. Abilene Nights? Abashedly Yours? Abacus Calculation?

For now, we have Lautner's first stab at being a leading man in Abduction, a consistently far-fetched thriller in which he plays a high school teenager who's suddenly caught up in a world of lethal spies and corrupt CIA men. Though not an abject failure, one hopes it's an aberration.

Rest assured, Abduction isn't four minutes old when we get our first look at a shirtless Lautner and his popular six-pack. Nathan (Lautner) is enjoying himself at a party, and when he trudges home the next morning, his father (Jason Isaacs) still makes him spar with him, to an oddly violent degree. But by dinner time, it's clear this is just tough love - and foreshadowing for the challenge that will come.

Nathan's mother (Maria Bello) grounds him for staying out too late the evening before, telling Nathan: "Trust needs to be earned" - a line that Nathan will later parrot, with all the timing of a young Schwarzenegger.

He's also seeing a psychologist, Dr. Weaver (Sigourney Weaver), for "impulsivity and rage issues." He tells her he feels like "a stranger in my own life."

Nathan has long been in love with his across-the-street neighbor, Karen (Lily Collins), and a school project fortunately brings them together. While researching, they stumble across a photo of what looks to be of Nathan as a toddler on a missing-children website.

When Nathan contacts the site, he sets off a chain reaction. Immediately, mean-looking men are marshaled from all corners of the globe, dispatched from a computer hacking bunker.

Throughout the film, incredible digital things like this happen. Abduction, directed by John Singleton, tries to portray a world of blanket surveillance without any real depiction of it. Nathan later calls 911 from a pay phone and the CIA answers. If he were to make toast, you'd swear an agent would pop up instead of bread.

There's no way to judge Abduction other than as the first "Taylor Lautner project." That was how it was conceived and that's how it feels, in every frame. It's a cynical movie, with little in mind other than a showcase for a very popular young actor.

As an action star, Lautner handles himself reasonably well. He has a bit too much of a boy-band singer look, but he's likable and the major deficiency of Abduction isn't his. It's the script.

Abduction *1/2 (out of four stars)

Directed by John Singleton. With Taylor Lautner, Lily Collins, Alfred Molina, Sigourney Weaver, and Maria Bello. Distributed by Lionsgate.

Running time: 1 hour, 46 mins.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (intense violence and action, brief profanity, sexual content, teen partying)

Playing at: area theaters

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