Stolen

Diverse — and divisive — worlds collide in Stolen, a film, that powered by its messy core, rips apart the fault lines in society, exposing the ever-growing chasm of class and caste and illustrates how a certain sense of redoubtability has now become the domain of the privileged. Horrific on many levels — though it doesn’t belong to the horror genre — Stolen is one of those films that you won’t be able to tear your eyes away from, immersive as it is in terms of its plot and players as well as in what seems like a narrative terrain that isn’t. That familiarity, unfortunately, stems from the fact that we hear and read about such stories every day — mob fury, kangaroo courts and a system that turns a blind eye and ear to the underprivileged. To sum it up, the lack of empathy is not unfamiliar in this country.

At a time when ‘Pan-India’ movies with larger-than-life action heroes in the lead are ruling the box office, debutant director Karan Tejpal’s film Stolen seems like an unusual thriller. It has two brothers helping a woman they have just met, find her missing baby, amid the sand dunes and by lanes of Rajasthan, as locals, cops, and thugs chase them and try to blame them for a crime they have not committed. The film, all of 90 minutes, is one of the slickest and edgy thrillers that Indian cinema has produced in recent years. There is not a single dull moment in this film, and an excellent screenplay backed by great performances by the three leads- makes Stolen a must-watch.

In a country bursting at its seams, where dissatisfaction is a perennial feeling among the underclass and prospect is solely reserved for the privileged, sanity hangs by a thread. And when all hell does break loose, it’s not just those numb to the pain of being brushed off but even the blameless that will find themselves crushed under the aftermath of blind rage. There’s no justifying mob lynching. There’s no understanding it either. What triggers a large group of people to attack a single person, in most cases not guilty of the alleged crime, and unleash their dormant animal and defend it as justice?

Questions abound in Karan Tejpal’s directorial debut, Stolen. For starters, why would Raman (Shubham Vardhan), a young man en route to attend a wedding — not just any wedding, mind you, but his mother’s wedding — suddenly jettison his plans in order to help a complete stranger in peril? There are a couple of ways you can answer it, including a recent bereavement we learn about, but my preferred theory is this: Raman is a freelance photographer who works for magazines. If there is one profession in India with a perpetually troubled conscience, it’s Raman’s. Matters are more straightforward for Raman’s brother, Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee). A foppish, affluent gent, with slicked-back hair and a practical manner, he just wants to get on with his night (“The afterparty is so not lit without your moves,” he’s told on the phone). Come to pick up Raman at the railway station, he witnesses a commotion. A five-month-old child has been stolen from the platform; the mother, a desperate-looking migrant labourer named Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer), initially suspects Raman, then acquiesces to his offer for help.

Stolen tells an NH10-coded story of two city-slicking brothers who — in trying to aid a police investigation of a stolen baby from a rural railway station — get sucked into a heartland nightmare. A drowsy Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) waits in his black SUV to pick up his younger sibling, Raman (Shubham Vardhan), whose train arrives late. Before they exit the platform, they bump into Jhumpa Mahato (Mia Maelzer), a distraught young mother who accuses Raman of abducting her toddler while she was asleep. The cops get involved; the confusion comes to light. Much to Gautam’s chagrin, Raman is consumed by an urge to help the woman. But they pay the price for being human. Things spiral quickly in a search that features a cursed manor, rehab center, angry mobs, baby-snatching gangs and illegal surrogacy rackets. The brothers find themselves trapped in a dark survival thriller. The question that emerges, however, is troubling: whose survival?

Karan Tejpal’s directorial debut, Stolen, begins in the night and ends in the day. It starts with a nightmarish scenario wherein a woman’s baby is taken from her and takes viewers on a real rollercoaster ride where the fates of all the characters are up in the air. The tense crime thriller, which is inspired by true events, is a real edge-of-your-seat drama that allows you to take a breath only at the very end. Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee) goes to pick up his younger brother Raman (Shubham Vardhan) at a sparsely occupied railway station in the middle of the night. Before that, a baby is quietly whisked away from the arms of Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer). When she wakes, she suspects Raman of the deed and causes an uproar. Soon, a crowd is gathered, and it takes Gautam’s interference to calm things down. From thereon, Stolen moves from one wild moment to another as the brothers, plus Jhumpa, are questioned by the police and overzealous locals in a bid to catch the real kidnappers. As the duo digs deeper and deeper in the mess, they discover the truth is much crazier than they imagined.