Muscle on the Run

CAST: Taylor Lautner,Lily Collins,Maria Bello,Sigourney Weaver,Alfred Molina

Rating: **

This is a crucial film for Taylor “Twilight” Lautner,requiring him to show that those biceps pack enough punch for him to carry a movie on his own. Lautner does his best,but eventually this film becomes one of those CIA plots-within-plots that you know will resolve themselves without you expending any energy to understand.

With Nathan (Lautner) discovering his childhood photo on a missing person’s website being the first clues in this maze,Abduction almost gets it right. In the brief role of a woman who has raised Nathan as her son,Bello is as-always entirely credible. However,before she can spill the beans,she is unsurprisingly killed. A whole house,to be precise,is blown up to smithreens,and the neighbourhood has no suspicions.

Nathan barely escapes with Karen (Collins),a girl he likes who had been coming over to study. When he calls 911,CIA operative Frank Burton (Molina) comes on the line and tells him to stay where he is. Nathan decides instead to run,prompted along by his psychiatrist (Weaver),who also turns out to be a CIA agent.

The rest of the film is about the run,during which Nathan and Karen fall in love,and we out of it.

Molina in a bad wig is,by the way,no match for the bad guy in casuals. He is the man you want to know the most about,but once you are passed off as “Kozlow” in a film about the CIA,nobody really cares about the details.

Lautner should nurse those biceps. They serve him well in this film,particularly when you would be better off not looking at what’s going on,or rather not,above the chin. Even a sequel seems in the air.