Sunday 22 January 2012

Abandoned

Abandoned is a 2010 released thrills and actions film which requires a considerable stretch of credulity. The films can be said to be in two parts. In the first a young woman accompanies her boyfriend to a hospital for day surgery. She accompanies him to the ward where a nurse asks him to get ready and tell the girl friend when to leave and how long the process will take. The hospital is in the processing of closing down with transfers to a new building already in hand. It is never explained why it is closing and transferring as the building is modern with modern facilities. While she waits she shares a cup of coffee with an elderly man who is spending his days at the hospital visiting his wife. When the boyfriend does not return at the time expected she makes inquiries and there is no record of him, or the nurse who she has encountered or the doctor he was supposed to be seeing and that the area where he was admitted and which she visited had been cleared and was no longer in use.

She makes various inquiries and eventually the hospital administrator is called because she making a nuisance of herself. When he is not found after extensive searching the girl calls a female friend who surprisingly appears the reinforce the hospital view that maybe the man used the visit as an excuse to break with her. She calls the police and the selected nearest officer is also sceptical but does a search of the large multifloor building without success. The direction of the film is to add to the sense that there is some great conspiracy especially when we learn that the man’s laptop has disappeared from his car. That he worked from home and other planted clues suggesting he has been kidnapped for some reason and with staff at the at the hospital colluding. When she spills her purse to reveal a bottle of anti depressants, although why should carry round such a large bottle is not explained, the suggestion is that she is making everything up and is in need of psychiatric help and with the doctor again appearing part of he conspiracy. The policeman leaves although calls at the home of the boyfriend and after breaking from the psychiatrist the girl goes on another search and gets a phone call from the boyfriend saying he is being kept prisoner within the hospital.

A key aspect of the film is that the girl works as an electronic expert for a bank and by phone she is told to transfer $10 million from the bank to an International account. She does this demanding to see her boyfriend before submitting the final transfer code.

We now come to the second part which occurs from the moment she pus through the transfer on seeing her boyfriend. Only then she realises she has been part of an elaborate hoax of which the boyfriend is the leader. His partners in crime include the man with whom she had a cup of tea, the nurse and the head security officer, with the latter responsible for erasing the CCTV record of his entering the hospital and going to the ward from which he official disappeared without ever having been there. This trio go off leaving the security chief to kill the girl and dispose of the body in a part of the hospital that is to be demolished but he wants to test out a comment from the boyfriend that she is great in bed. This provides the opportunity to escape and eventually to kill him with a piece of pipe.

Throughout the film she has been carrying a novel given to her by the boyfriend. At one point she uses the cover to do a paper trace for his National Insurance number as he used the book as a rest to complete a form. This number proves false as does the phone number of his mother he had put into her mobile. She gives the book to the policeman and when he gets home he looks at the final pages which appears to be include a story similar to what the young woman had explained happened to her boyfriend. The last part reveals that it was a scam and that the life of the victim is in danger. He calls for back up and make his way to the hospital.

Meanwhile the boyfriend, the girlfriend and the partner have made their getaway but a phone call reveals that the transfer has not in fact gone through. They arrive back as the girl is about to make her getaway so there follows a chase back through hospital during which the girl has the gun from the security guard and shoots the partner. The policeman gets back and captures the nurse girlfriend who is waiting in the car and then shoot the boyfriend just before he shoots the girl. The extent and levels of implausibility should be self evident. This is a three out of ten film with the rating shared by the the critics.


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