Gone

“Abduction” was already taken by that Team Jacob guy.

In 1988, a relatively unknown actor named Kevin Kline more than held his own with Monty Python’s best in an hilarious caper named A Fish Called Wanda. Kevin became a name overnight. And suddenly with pole position on the marquee, Kevin treated us to The January Man – a forgettable and dull tale of a serial strangler who gets off to Neil Sedaka (Kevin played the cop who tracks the bad guy down). Last year, everybody’s favorite teen wolf Taylor Lautner finessed his burgeoning star power into his first top billing major project – Abduction, which despite the lack of Neil Sedaka handicap, proved equally as thrilling as January Man and the national shuffleboard semifinals. And now, Amanda Seyfried is a “star” and gets her name in lights for Gone, another mediocre thriller, but at least Amanda is pretty.

How long has this been a pattern, anyway?

Well, it’s Amanda’s turn. Thrillers make easy vehicles; you don’t have to guess emotional reactions. When someone holds a gun to your forehead, you probably won’t be talk-show explaining later on, “I was going for angst.” This is probably why agents push new stars towards thrillers. Problem is if you’re not yet a household name, odds are your little thrill ride will suck. This brings us to Gone, a thriller which dares to ask, “if Amanda Seyfried fell down in the woods, would you care if she made a sound?”

Amanda plays Jill, a woman haunted by abduction gone bad. Turns out it was hers from one year earlier; although the movie explains not whether memories of the Taylor Lautner film also give her nightmares. There was little evidence to suggest that she was telling the truth about said abduction, so when her sister goes missing, the police are rather lethargic about acting on it. I think there was a good angle here to explore about the validity of her claim with respect to her own sanity. It’s road that’s been traveled before, of course. But the truth-telling-hero being treated as a wolf crier is ground as frequently trodden as John Goodman’s route between couch and fridge.

Will Amanda find her sister in time? Will anybody believe her? Will you believe that she could get a solid lead from “a blue and gray van” or a hardware store receipt? Can you suspend disbelief long enough to let Amanda escape the cops several times over? Maybe, maybe, no, oh Hell no.

Rated PG-13, 94 Minutes
D: Heitor “the not-so-black” Dhalia
W: Allison Burnett
Genre: New star thriller vehicle
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Amanda Seyfried’s pout
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Fans of Amanda Seyfried’s breasts