Stolen, the new Amazon Prime Video original film directed by Karan Tejpal starts off in a way where you would probably question why the main characters are throwing themselves into a situation they could have easily avoided. And it is actually at the halfway mark we sort of realize why a particular character was adamant about helping an underprivileged. Happening below the span of 24 hours, Stolen manages to be an effective political commentary about systemic failure that is happening in the country.
The movie is set against the backdrop of a rural village in North India. Gautham is waiting for his brother Raman at that railway station. When he goes inside the station, he sees that his brother is being wrongly accused of stealing a baby from a Bengali woman. Even though the accusation against Raman was cleared immediately, the brothers were sort of forced to follow the police to find the baby. How that journey goes is what we see in Stolen.
As I said, the movie does not even cover 24 hours in the lives of these characters. And if you look at the change in Abhishek Banerjee’s character Gautham between the first frame and the last frame, it can give you an idea about how things can change drastically if the system is inefficient. Thematically, the movie is a preachy one that asks the audience to raise their voice so that they can provide justice to the ones who deserve it. However, this messaging is not done in a verbal manner. Gautham of the initial portions of this movie is a representative of most of us who don’t want any trouble. The challenge for Karan Tejpal here is creating situations that can change a man within the span of a few hours.
Written by Gaurav Dhingra, the film is becoming engaging by addressing story cliches. For instance, when the brothers have lost direction, and another department decides to take them into custody, we would think that particular incident is going to ruin things for the two. But something else, which is less cinematic and more practical, is happening there. There are multiple instances where you would assume this would happen in the story, but it would immediately address that and look in a different direction. Ultimately, the film has an optimistic story, but they don’t want to make you think that it is a great world out there.
From the psychology and horror of mob mentality to the disturbing truths about illegal surrogacy, the movie sheds light on a lot of uncomfortable realities that are happening in the lawless rural areas of India. There is a breathtaking chase sequence in the film that really shows you the danger through which the brothers and the mother had to go through. The design of that mob attack was really good. The handheld nature of the cinematography really amplifies the panic in those areas. In the initial portions, we could see cinematographer Ishaan Ghosh cleverly using the headlights and breaklights of the car to create drama in sequences by placing characters in a certain position. The movie rarely uses the help of background score to convey the emotional space of characters, and it is mostly the sound design that gives us a cue about a possible danger.
The challenge here with the character of Gaurav, played by Abhishek Banerjee, is to make the transition of the character believable. From that mob attack sequence, we see Gaurav from a different perspective, and Banerjee manages to make us root for that character in the climactic portions. Mia Maelzer, as Jhumpa, maintains the mystery around her character while portraying the angst of Jhumpa. Shubham Vardhan plays the empathetic brother Raman. Raman’s decision to offer help to Jhumpa is integral to the movie, and through his performance, Shubham is able to make us believe that there is something seriously bothering him that restricts him from being selfish.
One movie that came to my mind while watching this film was the 2015 Anushka Sharma starrer NH 10, which was written by Sudip Sharma, the creator of Paatal Lok. The treatment and the visual language of Stolen have a similarity with the Navdeep Singh thriller, and both movies really give you that gutted feeling by showing the harsh truth. With a minimal runtime of 93 minutes, Stolen is an uncomfortable watch for all the right reasons.
