Abandon
Not only does the new “thriller” Abandon wins the Huh?!? Award for the absolute worst ending of the year, it is a strong contender for absolute worst film of the year. At the screening I paid to attend during the film’s first week in release, I was the only one in the theatre. I guess writer/director Stephen Gaghan (who won an Oscar for his adaptation of the screenplay for Traffic) was trying to be clever when he devised the guffaw-inspiring ending captured here, but since the film spends over an hour setting us up for a totally different film, the ending just comes off as funny (not in a good way) and amateurish. All the blame may not lay on Mr. Gaghan’s shoulders. He has adapted his script from a novel I have not read, or even heard of, entitled Adam’s Fall, by Sean Desmond, so it is possible this terrible ending is taken directly from the book. However, one has to wonder if it played better on the page.
Abandon is a thriller only in the minds of its creators and marketers. The film really is a big old mess. Mr. Gaghan tries to balance so many plot points in this film, it’s amazing anything registers. It starts out as the story of Katie Burke (Katie Holmes), a bright overachiever who struggling to manage her thesis and her classes while trying to find a job before graduation. Her friends (Zooey Deschannel, Gabrielle Union, and Gabriel Mann among them) are concerned about her, especially when Detective Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) starts investigating the disappearance of Katie’s boyfriend, Ethan, (Charlie Hunnam), which took place over two years earlier. Then one day, Katie sees Ethan across the quad, and things get steadily more complicated. There are miles of subplot, from Ethan’s stalking of Katie, to the disappearance of Katie’s dad years earlier, to Handler’s alcoholic past and uneasy recovery, to Katie’s competition with Mousy Julie (Melanie Lynskey), to Katie’s romance with Handler, to the disappearance of Harrison Hobart (Mann), a friend with more than a crush on Katie, and so on and so on until the unfathomable end. Thankfully, none of this interferes with Katie and her friends dropping Ecstasy — complete with freaky strobe lights and roaming hands!
Where do I begin? All of this sounds much funnier than it actually plays, which is deadly dull. Most of the aforementioned subplots go absolutely nowhere. The plots that are allowed to develop reveal themselves to be giant red herrings which the audience has no choice but to fall for since we are offered little else to hang our hats on. The supporting players are barely given a chance to register. Ms. Lynskey, of such diverse flicks as Coyote Ugly, Sweet Home Alabama, and Heavenly Creatures opposite Kate Winslet, has one scene in which she is allowed to shine, and Ms. Deschannel, of Almost Famous and Mumford, is dynamic and sexy in the role of the slutty best friend. But in the case of Ms. Union, who was so good in other things like 10 Things I Hate About You and Bring It On that she should have her choice of roles, one has to wonder why she took such a non-existent role in the first place.
Ms. Holmes is frustrating here, not because she gives a bad performance, but because she’s been better in other films like The Ice Storm, Go, and Wonder Boys. What she could have possibly seen in the material in its presented form baffles me. But if she wants a career after Dawson’s Creek, she cannot afford another Disturbing Behavior or Teaching Mrs. Tingle. This films falls somewhere between the two: not as much of a guilty pleasure as Tingle, but just slightly better than the awful Behavior. As for Bratt, it’s good to see the time he spent on Law & Order was not wasted.
And then there is that ending. It is best said that the end of this film, in no way, justified my emotional involvement in the hour and fifteen minutes which preceded it. I am one of those people who takes a certain amount of pride in the fact that I can guess the twist at the end of most films. I respect films and filmmakers that legitimately stump viewers at the end. The most popular example I can think of is the ending of The Sixth Sense, whose twisty ending fooled more than its fair share of viewers. However, when a film jumps its tracks and pulls an ending out of left field that is so ludicrous, unbelievable, and unsubstantiated by anything significant that came before, it has done nothing but betray the viewer. This is all Mr. Gaghan has managed to do. The only jaw-dropping and head-scratching that Abandon will elicit is from those of us who wonder how the hell Mr. Gaghan thought his bone-headed logic would actually work. The only thing worse than the ending is the denouement that closes the film. It left me speechless—and not in a good way.
Submitted 09 November 02. Posted 06 December 02.
