Abduction (2019)

 

Abduction (2019)- * *1\2

Directed by: Ernie Barbarash 

Starring: Scott Adkins, Andy On, Aki Aleong and Truong Anh

A man named Quinn (Adkins) wakes up in a mysterious room with a bunch of other abducted people, including his young daughter. Everyone has these weird, spider-like devices on the backs of their necks. Quinn manages to escape his captors, and somehow crawls out of a fountain in Vietnam. Last time he checked, it was 1985, and the fact that it's now 2018 is very disturbing to him. Naturally, people think he's crazy and a doctor named Anna (Anh) tries to get to the root of his problem.


Of course, she doesn't believe his tale of missing time and alien ABDUCTION, but when Conner (On) appears with a similar story involving his wife, the three of them get wrapped up in an adventure involving body-snatching aliens who are genuinely interested in Feng Shui. The Expert who may be able to figure out what's going on is Dao (Aleong), but the fact that these extraterrestrials have Martial Arts skills and regenerating power are going to make them tough opponents. Will Quinn and Conner rescue their loved ones from the diabolical space-baddies?


Well, you gotta give Abduction this: at least it's something different. It's DTV Sci-Fi action but thankfully it's not a space slog. So we do give it props for that right off the bat. Our personal hero Scott Adkins is quite good in the film, in both the acting and Martial Arts departments. Without him and his magnetic presence, the movie would have suffered a lot. But it does bring the action, there's no doubt about that, and at regular intervals we get some pretty nifty fight scenes with a Sci-Fi twist.


Sure, the plot doesn't make the most amount of sense, but so what? Most movies that make sense are boring. At least Abduction had some interesting ideas contained within it. The baddies provided worthy fight-foils for Adkins and On, even though it must be said that On's character of Conner is not very likable. Elements of They Live (1988) and The Matrix (1999) are there underneath the surface, and it's all mostly a bunch of quasi-nonsensical fun. Adkins is on record as stating that the fight scene in They Live is his favorite of all time, so he was probably happy to be in something with similar overtones. On perhaps a related note, one of director Ernie Barbarash's first films was called They Wait (2007).


The problem is the usual one: why is this movie 100 minutes long? It should have been 85. Barbarash's movies with Van Damme - Assassination Games (2011), 6 Bullets (2012), and Pound of Flesh (2015) - and Michael Jai White - Falcon Rising (2014) - are all well over the recommended 90-minute mark. Here, Adkins reunites with Barbarash after Assassination Games, which was one of the film's better ideas.


While Abduction may not be most people's first choice for cinematic entertainment, you could do a heck of a lot worse, and for fans it's worth seeing at least once for the Adkins factor alone.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty