Abduction | Point State Park — the wedge of land the whole city points at

Abduction establishes Pittsburgh the way almost every film shot here does: from above, at the Point, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela close on each other and become the Ohio. It takes a few seconds of screen time. It does the work of a paragraph of dialogue.

The park itself is thirty-six acres of flat green at the tip of the Golden Triangle, and the fountain at its nose throws water about a hundred and fifty feet into the air from April through October. Walk out to it and the illusion of the establishing shot falls apart in a useful way. From the helicopter the three rivers look like a diagram. From the ground they look like working water — barges pushing coal upstream, a rowing shell cutting past, the Fort Pitt Bridge humming overhead at your back.

The ground under your feet is older than the skyline behind it. The outlines of Fort Pitt and Fort Duquesne are marked in the lawn, and the Fort Pitt Blockhouse of 1764, the oldest structure in western Pennsylvania, still stands a short walk from the fountain, free to enter.

Come at dusk. The fountain goes gold, the office towers light up one floor at a time, and you understand why a thriller that needed a city to look both handsome and cornered chose this one.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.