In Stolen, Karan Tejpal’s directorial debut, there are many unanswered questions. The first question is why Raman (Shubham Vardhan), a young guy on his way to a wedding (not just any wedding, mind you, but his mother’s wedding), would abruptly abandon his plans to save the life of a total stranger? There are several possible answers, such as a recent death we find out about, but my favourite is this: Raman is a magazine photographer who works as a freelancer. Raman’s is one of the professions in India with the most tormented conscience.
Matters are more straightforward for Raman’s brother, Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee). “The afterparty is so not lit without your moves,” he is told on the phone. He is a foppish, wealthy man with slicked-back hair and a sensible demeanour who simply wants to get on with his night. When he arrives at the train station to pick up Raman, he sees a disturbance. The mother of a five-month-old kid that was taken from the platform is Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer), a desperate-looking migrant worker, who first doubts Raman before accepting his offer of assistance.
I hoped the train station scene had lasted a bit longer because it is so evocative in its building tension. Soon, two local police officers are leading the way as Raman, Gautam, and Jhumpa get into the car and chase a tenuous lead. A posse of forest police intercepts its cavalry at a checkpoint; a video of two men and a woman in a black SUV has gone viral in grassroots vigilance organisations, with “confirmed sources” identifying them as child abductors. This is the scary modern incarnation of the wanted poster in American Westerns, death by WhatsApp.
In 2018, a mob in Assam beat two men to death after they were falsely accused of kidnapping children. Both foul play and the pernicious mobilising influence of fake news were found. Although the plot is set in what appears and sounds like Rajasthan, Tejpal has claimed the occurrence as the inspiration for his film. There are subliminal references to the eastern source material in Gautam’s proficiency of Bengali and Jhumpa’s use of the language.
Stolen comes from a distinguished tradition of contemporary Hindi chase films. The top of the list is Navdeep Singh’s terrifying NH10, which is followed by Joram, Afwaah, and, to a lesser extent, Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar. These films all depict a country that has gone awry due to class animosity, greed, and false information. 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. I became engrossed in the film’s central sibling connection, with its realistic fusion of recrimination and protection, based solely on their discussions.
Abhishek Banerjee picks for violent genre roles that increase his chances of getting his face smashed in when he isn’t amusingly acting in the Stree films. The actor appears to flourish in ambiguities as he works with sighs, glances, and half-grins. He discovers a practicality in Gautam (“Only money comes handy in these situations,” he says), which maintains the character’s interest throughout. The movie concludes on a positive note. However, there’s always a feeling in Banerjee’s portrayal that, had things gone a bit differently, his conceited, urban samaritan would have just drove away without giving a damn. Stolen is currently streaming on Prime Video.
