‘Stolen’ movie review: Abhishek Banerjee’s road thriller is gritty but not revelatory

‘Stolen’ movie review: Abhishek Banerjee’s film, inspired by real events from 2018, has the atmospherics of a great Hindi chase film, but tells you nothing that you don’t already know

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.

The railway station sequence is so atmospheric, in its gathering tension, that I wished it lasted a little longer. Before long, Raman, Gautam and Jhumpa are in the car, chasing a flimsy lead, with two local police officers leading the way. At a checkpoint, their cavalry is intercepted by a posse of forest officers; a video has gone viral in grassroots vigilance groups of two men and a woman in a black SUV, “confirmed sources” marking them out as child kidnappers. This is the scary modern incarnation of the wanted poster in American Westerns — death by WhatsApp.

In 2018, two men, wrongly suspected of being child abductors, were beaten to death by a mob in Assam. Foul play was discovered, and the insidious mobilising power of fake news. Tejpal has cited the incident as the inspiration for his film, while transplanting the story to what looks and sounds like Rajasthan (Jhumpa speaking Bengali, and Gautam knowing his way around the language, are subliminal links to the eastbound source material).

Stolen descends from a fine lineage of modern Hindi chase films. Navdeep Singh’s harrowing NH10 is on top of the list, followed by Joram, Afwaah, and, to a lesser degree, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar. All of these films evoke a nation that has spun out of joint, riven by greed, misinformation and class rage. Stolen feels purposeful in this context, but by the same token, less revelatory. The film tells you nothing that you don’t already know.

Tejpal directs the chase sequences with a messy fluency; there isn’t much conventional action to speak of, yet it feels like an action film. The camera, more than once, stays put inside the vehicle and spins, in a swirl of chaos, a low-budget nod to the canonical oner in Children of Men. This, again, has been done before. A more impressive directorial choice on Tejpal’s part is the avoidance of flashbacks. Just from their conversations, I was invested in the sibling relationship at the film’s centre, with its life-like blend of protectiveness and recrimination.

When not goofing off endearingly in the Stree films, Abhishek Banerjee seeks out violent genre work, roles that ratchet up his chances of getting his face bashed in. The actor, working with sighs, looks and half-grins, seems to thrive in ambiguities. He finds a pragmatism to Gautam (“Only money comes handy in these situations,” he declares) that keeps the character constantly intriguing. The film ends on a redemptive note. Yet, in Banerjee’s performance, there is always a sense that, had things played out a little differently, his vain, city-dwelling samaritan would have simply driven off, caring not a hoot.