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She faces exams, completion of her thesis and a competitive interview process, all of which is compounded when a police detective, Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) begins investigating the two-year-old disappearance of her boyfriend, Embry Langan (Charlie Hunnam), a young man whose memory haunts and obsesses her. As the investigation continues, Catherine is forced to choose between her past passions and new possibilities, even as Handler is discovering surprising new facts about Embry and his possible connection to another disappearance from campus.  Critic Reviews On its surface, ''Abandon'' is a suspense film about a missing student, Embry (Charlie Hunnam), who may have returned to haunt his former girlfriend Katie (Katie Holmes), now a college senior, and to cause trouble on an Ivy League-like campus. But at its heart, the movie is more a character study of a woman dealing with the ugly side of being beautiful. This is an area rarely explored on film, where a lead female's beauty is generally either an asset or a given. But writer-director Stephen Gaghan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of ''Traffic'' who used Sean Desmond's novel ''Adams Fall'' as a springboard for ''Abandon,'' takes a more critical tack without being obvious about his intentions. Katie's father abandoned her and her mother when she was 3, and Embry left her behind years later. That she attracts everyone from an activist classmate (Gabriel Mann) to a corporate recruiter (Mark Feuerstein) to a recovering-alcoholic detective (Benjamin Bratt) seems only to increase her unease; they too might reject her despite her looks and brains, thus reinforcing her sense of being a fraud. These points are never stated directly, but they're implicit in the script and Holmes' effective performance. As in ''Wonder Boys,'' the actress has a natural ability to mix a beyond-her-years wisdom with a baby-faced naivete, and the tension between the two is especially pronounced here. Katie is exceptionally poised but, aside from a night of partying under a strobe light with friends, rarely carefree. In contrast, her best pal Samantha (Zooey Deschanel in an appealingly loose performance) may be overshadowed by Katie in almost every respect but, in a refreshing departure from cliche, never shows resentment. As a thriller, ''Abandon'' is admirably lacking in hype - Gaghan doesn't feel the need to pump up tense moments with shrill music or jarring camera effects - but also somewhat slack. Bratt's Wade Handler is a low-intensity gumshoe as he investigates what happened to Embry, and the movie mirrors his approach, preferring deliberate contemplation to urgency. Part of the problem is that Embry isn't compelling enough to make you care much where he went or whether he's returned. On paper he's a brilliant nonconformist given to extravagant gestures of charity and provocative solo art performances that extend a middle finger toward his complacent audience. But as portrayed by Hunnam, he's a floppy-haired pretty boy, one whom the script feeds such ludicrous pronouncements as ''I am the infantile center of the (expletive) universe!'' He should be so charismatic that you share Katie's feelings of abandonment and loss. Instead you just wish she'd move on. This rather drab-looking movie keeps you guessing up until the requisite twist ending, which Gaghan stages somewhat awkwardly by jumping back and forth in time. The biggest surprise may be what the filmmaker doesn't show; he withholds a big dramatic payoff, so the audience must fill in the blanks. In other words, Gaghan would rather make you think than jump. You might prefer to do both, but idea-driven thrillers are in short supply, and the troubled Katie earns the right to haunt your mind. Grade : C Cincinnati Enquirer - Combine the disappearances of two young men with the pressures of modern college life (all those tests, the thesis, those job ...   more Grade : B - Chicago Sun-Times - ''Abandon'' is a moody, effective thriller for about 80 percent of the way, and then our hands close on air. If you walk ...   more   For rating reasons : filmrating.com, mpaa.com                                    For Parents : Parentalguide.com
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