Somewhere in Abandon, there’s a rare movie about intelligent university kids. As this is just the thriller of the week, the aspects of it that do work aren’t properly exploited, permitting the film to break the tedium of not-much-happening with a mandatory twist ending. Still, Katie Holmes as the overachieving Katie Burke, who’s being queried about the disappearance of her pretentious boyfriend Embry (Charlie Hunnam), has an unrestrained movie-star quality. And the supporting cast of Benjamin Bratt, Zooey Deschanel, Gabrielle Union, and Michelle Lynesky bring oddball colour to the somewhat pedantic events. The only weak casting link is Hunnam, who’s too obviously impersonating Val Kilmer’s Jim Morrison impersonation in The Doors. It’d be nice to see most of these characters in a project that cares about them enough not to throw them away for a tired whodunit plot. Directed with rich moodiness by Stephen Gaghan (best known as the screenwriter of Traffic), Abandon’s tsunami of conflicting tones–it’s quirky but humourless, studied but predictable–frequently make it feel much stronger than it actually is. But by the time the climactic third act hits, only the most extreme of coffee fiends will remain enraptured by the movie’s events.