Critic's Grade: F

"Abandon" is one of those movies that suffers from what I like to call the "Traffic" curse, meaning that the filmmakers involved in that 2000 Oscar-winning project haven't made a half-decent movie since then. Take Steven Soderbergh, for instance, who followed up his impressive efforts with the unamusing "Ocean's Eleven," and then went even lower with "Full Frontal." Now the Academy Award-winning screenwriter, Stephen Gaghan, makes his own directorial debut with this turgid exercise in overblown teen thriller politics that left me perplexed for all the wrong reasons. Throughout the film, I questioned the filmmakers instead of the plot; I shouted obscenities at the screen in complete infuriation; in short, I was pissed. Gaghan, what the hell were you thinking?

Although the target audience is obviously teenagers, the setting happens to the college, where the bright and highly intellectual Katie Burke (Katie Holmes) spends her days and night pining away for a business degree and a well-paying job in international spending and trade. Such high ambitions, considering she is becoming increasingly unstable when the presence of police detective Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) delivers a jolt of reawakening in her concerning a part of her past that she would rather leave dormant.

Handler has been sent out to investigate the disappearance of one Embry Larkin (Charlie Hunnam), a former student at the university who, for no apparent reason other than sheer contempt for those around him, packed up and left without a trace more than two years ago. Handler, after making a connection between Embry and Katie, begins questioning her about their relationship together before his disappearance; at first hesitant, she begins to open up more about the events that led up to that night in question. Pretty soon, however, she finds herself the target of none other than Embry himself, who has returned from afar to reclaim her, even if she won't have him back.

As these series of events progress, things are quick to develop into a regular, run-of-the-mill, idiot-prone teen thriller where all the characters make all the wrong choices, and end up paying for them later. Katie is one of the most mind-numbingly stupid female characters in the history of movies; when invited by her now-psychotic boyfriend to rendevouz at his country house, she doesn't stop to think that maybe, just maybe, he might have other plans that don't include a night of passion so much as they do a kitchen knife and a plastic garbage bag. Her actions only become more dimwitted as things continue, to the point at which I was screaming out insults and wincing in sheer agony over her utter and irrepressibly obvious insipidness.

But that's not all that's going on within the movie, folks (for those who have not seen the movie, may I suggest skipping the rest of this paragraph, and returning later). Gaghan, in what used to be his infinite wisdom (which is now flushed down the toilet), gives the movie one of those surprise-twist endings that either succeed and throw us for a complete loop, or fail miserably and have no energy to revive and already-dead project. His ending falls into both categories: I didn't quite expect what was coming, but when everything had played itself out, I only hated the movie even more than I did prior to the finale. All the reasoning behind the love interest between Katie and Handler, the various run-ins with Embry, the subtle clues that Gaghan introduces later in the film, all come together in a manner that is mildly pleasing on a level of logic, but really, it just makes certain characters look even dumber. No cop in his right mind would be doing the things that Handler does here, and no female college student, for that matter, would throw over Benjamin Bratt. It just ain't happening, folks.

In terms of style and performances, the movie is big on both, but they serve little purpose here. Gaghan's attempts to set a mood for terror and suspense through darkly-lit hallways and subdued colors (and let's not forget the routine score by Clint Mansell) is outdone by the ridiculousness of the overall movie itself; he's trying to manipulate us with scares, and if you're luckyenough to realize it, you won't feel a thing. Holmes tries her best to give us a good performance, but her character is so banal that she's completely ineffective. Bratt, while always admirable, cannot salvage the wreckage of his character, either, and when you're left with no points of interest, what is there to praise? "Abandon" belongs to that not-so-rare breed of movies, that which is becoming vastly overpopulated with each passing debut weekend: the thriller that refuses to thrill.

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