Abandon (2002)

Director:

Stephen Gaghan

Writer (WGA):

Stephen Gaghan (written by)

Release Date:

18 October 2002 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

Watch who you leave behind.

Plot:

A senior at an elite college, already under severe pressure to complete her thesis and land a prestigious job...

Plot Keywords:

Thesis | Detective | College | Alcoholic Relapse | Flashback Sequence

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

Katie Holmes	...	Katie Burke
Benjamin Bratt	...	Wade Handler
Charlie Hunnam	...	Embry Larkin
Zooey Deschanel	...	Samantha Harper
Fred Ward	...	Lieutenant Bill Stayton
Mark Feuerstein	...	Robert Hanson
Melanie Lynskey	...	Mousy Julie (as Melanie Jayne Lynskey)
Philip Bosco	...	Professor Jergensen
Gabriel Mann	...	Harrison Hobart
Will McCormack	...	August
Gabrielle Union	...	Amanda Luttrell
Greg Kramer	...	Andre
Gillian Ferrabee	...	Susan
Barry Julien	...	Ted
Tony Goldwyn	...	Dr. David Schaffer

Also Known As:

Abandoned (USA) (working title)

MPAA:

Rated PG-13 for drug and alcohol content, sexuality, some violence and language.

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

USA | Australia

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Color (MiniDV) | Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

DTS | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Brazil:16 | South Korea:15 | Netherlands:12 | Argentina:13 | Australia:M | Canada:PG | Finland:K-15 | Iceland:12 | Norway:15 | Philippines:PG-13 | Singapore:PG | UK:12 | USA:PG-13 (certificate #39097)

Filming Locations:

McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

The screenplay was suggested by the book "Adam's Fall" by Sean Desmond.

Goofs:

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At the AA meeting, Detective Handler says, "I'm Wade Handler; I'm a cop." Last names are not given at AA meetings, to preserve the anonymity of those present.

Quotes:

Samantha Harper: You're thinking about the cop, aren't you?
Katie Burke: Maybe.
Samantha Harper: Okay, visualize this with me. You're down in New York consulting with Lou Gerstner or the head of GE telling them how to buy South American countries but on the weekends, you fly back up here to hang out with the cop, do cop things, maybe go to cop mixers...
Katie Burke: I like the cop.
Samantha Harper: Yeah, um, I can see that.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Film Geek (2005)

Not perfect but worth seeing

Caught this on cable last night and I liked it. I thought Katie Holmes did extremely well with a very tricky role, and I thought there were a lot of well written exchanges between the characters, excellent atmospheric touches, and enough psychological ambiguity to allow me to figure out what was really going on before the ending, but this didn't make the film predictable - it made it clever. And the title is a good one - extremely telling, a clue in itself. Of course, it's not a perfect film by any stretch; there's too much stuff that really doesn't need to be in the movie but I still give it a 6 (my IMDb equivalent of *** - a decent premise, decently executed).