Abandon, directed by Stephen Gaghan, is about a young man, Embry Larkin (played by Charlie Hunnam), who disappeared two years earlier. When the film begins, the missing persons case is assigned to Detective Wade Handler (played by Benjamin Bratt) because he was the heir to a large fortune. The law does not allow a missing person to be declared dead until seven years after a report is filed. After Handler reviews news clippings about Embry, he knocks on the door of his onetime girlfriend, Catherine ("Katie") Burke (played by Katie Holmes), a college senior who is majoring in finance. (The filming location is McGill University in Montréal.) At first, Katie is reluctant to talk about Embry; she prefers to finish her honor's thesis so that she can get a job in New York City. Handler, however, is persistent. He keeps tracking her down until she finally reveals that Embry has been appearing from time to time to stalk her; later, she gives him a note, saying that he recently gave her the note. Flashbacks establish that the two had a very amorous relationship when they were sophomores. A rich kid, Embry ended her virginity during a weekend in his New Hampshire summer cottage. In time, Handler sleeps with Katie and confides that he is considering quitting his police job; he is a recovering alcoholic. Her new love with him evidently enables her to get her act together, so she finishes her thesis and is about to graduate. Although Katie has been so shaken by Embry's disappearance that she has been having counseling sessions with the campus psychiatrist, Dr. David Shaffer (played by Tony Goldwyn), she rejects his offer of perhaps more than friendship when in their final session he asks permission to call her in New York. One evening, she says goodbye to her college friends, telling them that Handler has invited her to go with him for a weekend in New Hampshire. However, Handler does not show up. While at work in New York, Robert Hanson, an interviewer who took a fancy to her (played by Mark Feuerstein), shocks her by saying that he does not want a romance so that he will not jeopardize his chances to become a partner in the firm by violating the company's nonfraternization rule. When the forensics lab indicates that Embry's note to Katie was written two years earlier, not recently, the clues to the mystery appear much clearer but continue to emerge in a manner that filmviewers may dislike. That Abandon is based on the novel Adam's Fall (2000) by Sean Desmond is perhaps the most revealing clue of all.  MH

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Adam's Fall
by Sean Desmond

Decades have passed since the murky accident that claimed the lives of three Adams House residents. But somebody wants to relive--and punish--the sins of the past.