(08/12/01)

NOTE: The screenplays we review are often in development and may experience many rewrites, some could end up being completely different than what is reviewed here. It is our hope that our reviews generate more interest in the film. Thank you.

ABANDON, the directorial debut of Oscar-winning TRAFFIC scribe Stephen Gaghan, is just about the hottest project in town. If you take a look at Entertainment Weekly’s recent "It list" you’ll notice that nearly everyone on it was involved in this film.

ABANDON has a pretty big problem going for it. A thorn in its side. A ball and chain attached to its foot.

Nothing happens.

You may ask, "How can nothing happen?" But I’m serious. Nothing. Happens. This is a thriller without thrills. A horror movie without a single scare. A blank screen without dimensions. It’s 112 pages of dead air.

Very, very loosely based on Sean Desmond’s first novel ADAMS FALL, ABANDON is the story of a woman (Katie Burke) who is haunted by an ex-boyfriend among the impressive Gothic architecture of Harvard University. The boyfriend, Embry Langan (wacko rich kid with all the anger and charisma college girls love), has gone missing and is presumed dead. He’s been gone for two years, no money has been drawn from his accounts, plane tickets he bought were never used. The case is ice-cold, and that’s why it’s handed to detective Alvin Handler, a recovering alcoholic just back on the job.

Embry was a composer and left the college acrimoniously insulting a crowd that had assembled to see his opera "Trip-Hop Inferno." Katie says it was all part of an act. Handler isn’t so sure and thinks Embry might have committed suicide.

Katie has never gotten over Embry and with the crush of finals and her uncompleted thesis weighing down on her, she thinks the pressure has driven her out of her mind when she starts to hear weird noises and has visions of her ex around campus.

ABANDON is just plain empty. It has the aspirations of a shock-thriller, but it’s really about college life and the hectic nature of your final months before graduation. Most of our time is taken up with Katie going on interviews for jobs and studying for her thesis ("Emerging Ancillary Markets in the Global Wireless Revolution"). Apparently Gaghan, to get the directing job, had to cheapen the script’s price and rewrote accordingly. It was said this was to delete any need for special effects. Which is a good thing. All one has to do is look at the original HAUNTING and the terrible remake and see that adding special effects to a simple, spooky movie sucks the life right out of it. Having said that, after reading this script, which was finished just a few months ago, with its parched, wandering plot and immutable characters, I’m thinking that the vitality was erased from Gaghan’s writing. What this "practical effect" writing leads to is what every movie trying to creep you out has: creaking floors, doors mysteriously open, the soft call of someone’s name.

Gaghan gets plenty of mileage out of Handler. Gaghan, a former substance abuser, knows the workings of an addict’s head and he also throws in funny, detailed bits about AA and how an addict has to live post-recovery. A perfect example is Handler’s car: he has to blow into a tube which tests the level of alcohol in his system; if it’s too high the car won’t start.

Handler and Katie hook up, have a few awkward moments, and then plenty of good movie sex. Back at the campus Katie continues to be haunted. Her friends either laugh or try to help. Handler lurks around not doing much. And on and on -- ad infinitum.

The plot of this script is totally ridiculous. Gaghan wants us to believe that Katie is terrorized by these apparitions but keeps walking around late at night so the ghosts have all the opportunity in the world to get at her. That Handler can just hang about the campus, taking his sweet-ass time with the case, even bringing his dog along one day to play in the grass. This is a two-year-old dead case. Isn’t there anything else going on around Harvard? We find out midway through the script that Embry is alive, which kills any suspense Gaghan was building. Embry plays around with Katie, sickly dragging her from one place to the next, and we’re now supposed to worry about her physical safety. Embry is another problem. He speaks like a guy that’s read too much philosophy without understanding it and studied the recondite speechifying of cheap dictators. His dialogue is composed of execrable, I’m-smarter-than-you "thoughts." Guys like Embry do score in college, but there’s nothing to suggest Katie would fall so hard for him. She’s a kind soul, lavishly pretty, brilliant -- and he’s a total jerk. Gaghan has Katie so appreciative for Embry unlocking her heart that when they make love for the first time she...get ready..."cries tears of joy."

Dropping Sean Desmond’s story of a student’s horrifying descent into madness (his lead was a male, by the way), Gaghan tells the story of a beautiful young girl who, like, would really appreciate if her ex-boyfriend would leave her alone so she could study peacefully in the library and have hot sex with the former-drunk-but-still-cute-as-all-hell cop.

Katie is a needy girl who attaches great importance to every man she dates. She falls apart at the first sign of rejection. Gaghan is, actually, showing us Katie’s descent into madness, but since he’s telling it from the ass-end view, we never know this. He’s told the story from the wrong point of view and that has weakened it till it exists as it does today: pallor a dead white, rigor setting in. The script becomes a kind of colorless BASIC INSTINCT meets JACOB’S LADDER. With none of the sexy appeal of the former and none of the intelligence and creepiness of the latter.

There’s the "twist" ending you saw coming five minutes into the script. What Gaghan doesn’t seem to understand is that a surprise ending should add to a movie’s experience, not be the only thing it has. The evil-laugh finale makes you think back on the plot and does, sort of, make the story more interesting. But after plodding through it -- what’s the point? An "aha!" ending cannot be used to plug plot holes.

Stephen Gaghan is a talented man. He’s worked on THE PRACTICE, won an Emmy for a script he co-wrote on NYPD BLUE, and he nicely Red-Eyed the British miniseries TRAFFIK to America. Even the script HAVOC, which I reviewed, was flawed but brimming with possibilities. He was able to get into the minds of his characters and I felt like he knew those people. In ABANDON Gaghan seems to be confirming that the people in the story are just chess-pieces on a board to move his plot. It looks to me like Gaghan is only directing this because he could direct it.

Katie Burke will aptly be played by Katie Holmes. Benjamin Bratt, who had a small role in TRAFFIC, tackles Handler.

Katie, who must have a thing for Gothic horror movies since she’s making this after THE GIFT, is a fine actress who hasn’t, so far, been hampered by her TV day job. She’s turned in good performances in bad movies (like DISTURBING BEHAVIOR and TEACHING MRS. TINGLE), gentle, real performances in decent movies (like WONDER BOYS) and fitting performances in good movies (like THE GIFT). As much as I know she will bring to this role, it’s a waste to cast her here; she’s too good to fill out such a one-dimensional part.

Benjamin Bratt left LAW & ORDER to stop playing a cop and moved on to movies where he’s been playing...cops. First he’s an FBI agent in MISS CONGENIALITY and now this. Clearly Gaghan was thinking of box-office potential and how good Katie and Ben would look in the sack when he cast this role. Handler is a drunk who just got off the bottle thirty days ago. He’s a lonely guy who has never had a person in his life. Are we to believe that a guy as gorgeous and in-shape as Bratt has been drinking his whole life and never had a woman attach herself to him? C’mon!

ABANDON does have one thing going for it. And it’s pretty big. Matthew Libatique shot the film. Libatique, who did amazing work on REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, will doubtlessly bring a stygian, stylish doom to the scenes of Katie getting creeped out in various locations. Seeing what the script offers, I’m assuming Libatique took this job (working with a first-time director) because he had big plans for these scenes. His involvement makes this a slightly classier project, but even he can’t defeat...

...the awful script. Gaghan’s screenplay is dry, devitalizing, unavailing and has an odd sort of screw-it apathy to its story and how it unfolds.

Everyone working on this film is too good for it. Their collective talent should produce a non-disaster. But wouldn’t it have been much more fun and appetizing if they were getting together to work on something superlative? Well, there’s always next time.

-- Darwin Mayflower.