3.5 Stars (out of 4)
Watch Stolen on Amazon Prime
Two brothers are drawn into a kidnapping case in the gripping drama Stolen. This is the most intense Hindi rural thriller since Anushka Sharma’s brilliant NH10.
Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer) sleeps on a bench at a train station with her 5-month-old baby Champa when another woman quietly grabs the infant and makes off with her. Jhumpa wakes moments later to find the baby missing, and no one on the platform saw anything. The only potential suspect is a man holding Champa’s hat.
The man with the hat is Raman (Shubham Vardhan), who just stepped off the train and is late to his mother’s wedding in the city. The delay means Raman’s wealthy brother Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) is already in a bad mood when he arrives at the station to pick him up. Finding Raman being grilled by the police as to where he found the hat only makes Gautam grouchier.
At first, the cops don’t seem eager to investigate a lead beaten out of a nearby tea vendor, so Jhumpa asks the brothers for help finding her baby. Gautam offers her money. The money isn’t for anything in particular, like hiring a detective or paying for a ride to a friend’s house. It’s just supposed to make Jhumpa go away. She doesn’t take the money.
That brief exchange summarizes the point of the film. People of means think that every problem can be solved with money. They aren’t concerned with what happens after they hand over their cash, so long as they get what they want. In this case, Gautam wants to take Raman to their mother’s house. He doesn’t really care if Jhumpa finds her baby or not.
Raman is disgusted by his brother’s lack of sympathy, but the cops take the decision out of the men’s hands. Inspector Shakti Singh (Sahidur Rahaman) and constable Pandit Ji (Harish Khanna) order the guys and Jhumpa to follow them in Gautam’s car to investigate the tea seller’s lead in a remote area that’s further away than the “15 minutes” they promised.
Along the way, the car is stopped by other law enforcement officers who’ve gotten a tip via social media that two men and a woman in a black SUV fled a train station with a stolen baby. They’ve even got Gautam’s license plate number. Singh and Pandit Ji set these officers straight, but that won’t stop the firestorm the rumor set off in the region. Turns out Champa isn’t the first baby to be taken, and folks are eager to make someone pay. Jhumpa and the brothers are only safe as long as they stay with the police — a fact they don’t appreciate until it’s too late.
From the brothers’ perspective, Stolen is about being in the wrong place at the wrong time and how your response to trouble illuminates your character. But from a wider view, the story is about powerlessness. It’s about how easy it is to victimize the poor and working class, and how institutions like the police that purportedly exist to help everyone don’t really (last year’s thriller Sector 36 was another great example of this).
That kind of environment creates a vacuum where poor people’s only recourses for justice are the ones they create for themselves. Hence the appeal of an anonymous social media rumor that pins the blame squarely on three people. Targeting Jhumpa, Raman, and Gautam is an action the villagers can take in the absence of better options. Rich guys like Gautam don’t have enough cash to defuse that explosive anger borne from helplessness.
The performances in Stolen are pitch-perfect. Banerjee plays Gautam as loathsome at the start, but his mind and heart open as their situation worsens. Vardhan has some of the saddest eyes in the business, making it easy to care for Raman, who’s always trying to do the right thing. Maelzer’s Jhumpa keeps secrets, but her desperation is genuine and urgent.
Director Karan Tejpal — who co-wrote Stolen with Gaurav Dhingra and Swapnil Salkar — is equally adept at showing the breadth of a societal problem as he is at showing the emotional turmoil of the three main characters. He also displays a real flair for action. The stunt driving in Stolen is a marvel. This film is something special.
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