Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.
Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Beulah Bram A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.
Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.
jennybeverage I thought this movie was great! I'm surprised I never saw it, as I love Gabriel Mann, Katie Holmes, Zoey Deschancel, etc. This movie has a 4.9 right now and I can't believe that. It is more artsy than perhaps people were ready for back when it came out, but now I think it's a really great movie. "Slow" maybe but not more than a hundred films in the 2000s and 2010s that got much higher ratings. It's not horribly confusing either, although you do get to think during it to figure out what you think is going on. It's pretty good. I give this a 7.5.
robert-temple-1 So this was Katie Holmes when she was young, a cute and engaging kid of 23. And then she met 'Mr. Clear'. Well, let's put all that behind us, along with all those transcended engrams. Let's consider this film instead. This is a story about a girl who is trying to complete her Ph.D. thesis at university and a detective approaches her and asks questions about her former boyfriend who disappeared two years ago, and from whom she has heard nothing since. All the evidence points to him being dead, but he is still being treated as a missing persons case. We see a lot of the boyfriend in flashbacks, and he was as odious as, well, let's be frank about this, 'Mr. Clear'. Why do girls go for guys like that? And then there is the boy called Harrison Hobart (funny that, I once knew a Harrison Hobart from northern Ohio, and Katie Holmes comes from northern Ohio; is this an in joke, one wonders, as how could anybody make that name up?). Harrison is in love with Holmes but she doesn't notice. Did he kill the boyfriend out of jealousy? The boyfriend was heir to a huge fortune, as both his parents died when he was young. Has he been done away with for nefarious financial purposes? (Are any financial purposes not nefarious? A question for university students to debate in their dorms.) Holmes seems such a wry sweetie, always smiling in her bemused way. She has been so wronged, in fact, so abandoned (hence the title of the film). The poor kid was abandoned by her father at the age of five and we see occasional flashback glimpses of that. Such a trauma. How deeply has it affected her? And then to be abandoned by the boyfriend like that. But then he suddenly returns without warning and starts taunting her. What is wrong with the guy? Has he no heart? The cop is protective, falls for her, and she for him. Soon they are an item. Zooey Deschanel is Holmes's cute and irreverent pal, and is very good at being an off the wall friend. But the real knockout performance in this film is by Melanie Lynskey as a dippy girl who keeps chatting to Holmes in the library. Lynskey makes a fantastic character out of this small ing role. Then we get the plot twists. However, a gentleman never tells.
Michael O'Keefe Intense, dark and desperate. Katie(Katie Holmes)is a college student that has about reached her stress level trying to finish her thesis while competing with her friends for job interviews to enter the corporate world. There is one other thing...Katie is haunted by illusions of her extravagant well-to-do ex-boyfriend Embry(Charlie Hunnam) who's been missing for two years. Things become very tense and more complicated when a reluctant detective(Benjamin Bratt)reopens the missing person's case. This sleeper almost gets the best of you; but right before nodding off...the finale explains everything. Drug and alcohol scenes plus some mild sexuality and violence earn the PG13 rating.Most of the interest is the young Holmes, who seems to beg for your protection. Bratt could have phoned this one in. Zooey Daschanel is very noticeable as the 'anything goes' collage girl. Also in the cast: Fred Ward, Melanie Lynskey, Gabriel Mann and Gillian Ferrabee.
Turfseer 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 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 ive 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.
