Missing

Nathan (Taylor Lautner, the "Twilight" movies) is a typical teenager and the star of 2011's "Abduction." He lays back on the hood of the car while his friend cruises down the street a la something out of "The Dukes of Hazzard", attends out of control parties and wakes up shirtless and drunk on the lawn the next morning, and finds himself dealing with a strict father and more sympathetic mother. His father (Jason Isaacs, "Nine Lives") spars several rounds with Nathan in his hungover state to teach him discipline. It is said that Nathan has rage issues and the boxing with his father and wrestling at school help him to deal with those issues and so do sessions with a caring therapist (Sigourney Weaver, "Aliens"). When assigned to do a 10 page research paper (who didn't love those in school?) about missing people with his pretty female neighbor (Lily Collins, "Mirror, Mirror"), he finds a picture of a boy that looks like himself on a missing kids website. The missing kids website is a cover for a group of Serbian criminals dealing in stolen government secrets. When agents come to the house looking for encrypted documents containing these secrets, Nathan's "mother" (Maria Bello, "A History of Violence") and "father" are killed. His therapist helps him to get away from the criminals even though he is also being trailed by the head of the CIA (Alfred Molina, "Spiderman 2"), who states "the currency of this war is information" (the documents Nathan has that the criminals want). When Nathan comes face to face with Koslow (Michael Nyqvist, an actor I've never heard of before), the head of the criminal group, the man threatens to kill everyone from Nathan's boring teachers to all his Facebook friends to get what he wants. This is also the same man who, when meeting Nathan at a Pirates game to talk about the documents, says "I don't understand this game at all, but I like popcorn" as he munches away. I won't give away any more of the plot or the ending. It's somewhat complicated, but not terribly so, however, I don't want to reveal anything else to ruin anything. I liked how Nathan's exasperated father in one scene mumbled the word "teenagers" as so many parents have done before him, but the CIA head does the same thing and uses the word "kids". Clearly, Nathan is a teenager, but it's interesting that he is referred to as a kid and in a movie of this sort you do expect someone older to be the leading actor (someone like Bruce Willis maybe or more recently, Liam Neeson). When Nathan's friend Karen goes to kiss him, she remarks "and no braces, either" which also references to the "kids vs teenagers" theme. Most kids would have braces whereas a teenager may not anymore. She happened to be referring to an encounter they had when they were younger. I enjoyed this movie. What started out as a "face-on-the-milk-carton" movie turned into a nice edge-of-your-seat thriller where no one was who they seemed. I'm sure "Twilight" fans will appreciate the fact that Taylor Lautner has a shirtless scene in the film. Oh yeah and he cries in one scene, tears running down his face as he says "I was dreaming about [my parents]", the same parents who were just bumped off. Aww, buff and sensitive, what a combination.