'Stolen' Movie Review: Abhishek Banerjee Excels in Karan Tejpal's Chilling Thriller On Mob Mentality (LatestLY Exclusive)

Stolen Movie Review: Karan Tejpal's Stolen has its screenplay (written by Tejpal, Gaurav Dhingra, and Swapnil Salkar) inspired by real-life incidents of people being brutally mob-lynched over false accusations, often fuelled by fear-mongering on WhatsApp. Although it premiered at the 2023 Zurich Film Festival and had the backing of four prominent filmmakers - Anurag Kashyap, Kiran Rao, Nikkhil Advani, and Vikramaditya Motwane - it took nearly two years for Stolen to reach Indian shores. This hard-hitting, gritty thriller finally arrives on Prime Video. ‘Stolen’ Release Date Out: Abhishek Banerjee-Starrer Crime Thriller to Premiere on June 4.

Stolen begins with a baby being abducted from a poor Bengali migrant woman sleeping on a railway platform by another woman. When Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer) wakes to find her child missing, she causes a commotion, first accusing Raman (Shubham Vardhan) of the crime because he happens to be holding the child’s cap. Raman’s brother Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee), who’s arrived to pick him up, also gets caught up in the chaos.

Gautam and Raman come from an affluent family and are meant to attend a wedding that same day. While Gautam is keen to distance them both from Jhumpa’s troubles as quickly as possible, Raman feels more sympathetic to her plight and wants to help. However, the brothers completely underestimate the danger they’re walking into. A doctored video goes viral, falsely accusing them - and Jhumpa - of being child traffickers. Suddenly, they’re forced to flee for their lives from a bloodthirsty mob bent on serving its own twisted form of ‘justice’.

Watch The Trailer of 'Stolen':

One of the most striking things about Stolen is how easy it is to connect with the events it portrays, thanks to its relatable setting and grounded characters. The film opens at a railway station, where it’s still common for people to lose their belongings - and here, tragically, it’s a child. Missing persons cases are a harsh reality, subtly reinforced by a scene where Jhumpa searches for her baby amidst pillars plastered with posters of other missing people.

'Stolen' Movie Review - The Three Main Characters

The film’s three central characters reflect the stark social and moral disparities in the country. Two of them come from privilege, and one doesn’t - but even the privileged brothers are vastly different from each other. Gautam is someone who would never poke his head into other people’s problems—more out of self-preservation and a learned apathy born from privilege, which he’s willing to weaponise if a situation turns sticky. He’s not a bad person - he clearly cares for his brother - but he hides behind an uncaring façade when it comes to someone else’s suffering. Over the course of the film, however, we see a transformation. The harrowing ordeal becomes a kind of coming-of-age story for him. Abhishek Banerjee delivers a solid performance, capturing Gautam’s initial aloofness and then shifting into fear and grit with nuance.

Raman, played capably by Shubham Vardhan, represents the liberal class—empathetic towards the oppressed and willing to stand up for them, albeit sometimes with a degree of naïve recklessness. His kinder instincts towards Jhumpa, a woman he barely knows, make him seem like a better person, but it’s also clear he might have been safer had he listened to his brother and kept out of it. His tendency to see the world in black and white—even within his own family - comes with consequences, especially when he realises Jhumpa’s story isn’t entirely watertight. And even if they display different behavioural tendencies, both siblings do share a common cause of embarrassment - despite them desiring to attend their mother's wedding - they are ashamed to talk about it to others.

Then there’s Jhumpa, who represents a section of society for whom justice is often a distant dream. It’s clear that the limited help she does receive from the system is only because two well-off strangers are now entangled in her ordeal. And yet, she shows more grit and survival instinct than either of them. In the climax, even while wounded and hunted by violent men, she relentlessly pursues the one responsible for her child’s kidnapping. Mia Maelzer is a clear standout in the film.

'Stolen' Movie Review - Intense Sequences

The early segments work well as they build the mystery of the missing child while highlighting the growing rift between the three main characters—a tension that worsens when Gautam unwittingly ruins a significant lead in the case. ‘Jaat’ Movie Review: A Mind-Numbingly Violent and Boring ‘Telugu’ Potboiler, Incidentally Starring Sunny Deol.

Stolen then shifts gears, morphing from a suspenseful drama into a full-blown horror story when the brothers enter a village asking for information and are mistaken for kidnappers. Horror doesn’t need ghosts or demons—it can just as easily stem from the evil that ordinary people are capable of when convinced they’re delivering justice. That’s what makes Stolen so frightening: its realism.

The sequence where the villagers first confront the brothers is shot ingeniously from a single point-of-view inside their vehicle, heightening the chaos as it erupts outside. The camera never breaks from that perspective until they scramble back into the car and flee.

The horror is laced with high-stakes action, as Gautam, Raman, and Jhumpa are pursued by armed men on motorbikes, leading to heart-in-your-mouth moments. Cinematographer Isshaan Ghosh employs handheld camerawork to inject realism, with long, unbroken tracking shots that build palpable tension. A particularly chilling scene features the mob capturing one of the characters and enacting their twisted idea of justice - a moment of unflinching, brutal violence.

Tejpal smartly keeps the mob largely faceless, allowing the idea of mob mentality itself to become the true villain. These people might not be inherently evil, but their collective belief in their own righteousness, combined with a total lack of reasoning or reflection, makes them terrifying. Especially since the film isn’t based on one isolated incident - mob violence is a growing threat in contemporary India.

'Stolen' Movie Review - Mixed Bag of an Ending

And yet, Stolen also shows how malleable this mob mindset can be, with one character later using a crowd to stop a crime instead of fuelling it. Even the cops are shown in shades of grey - they show apathy towards the grieving woman, their questioning hardens when this is pointed out to them, and they are also shown corrupt. Yet they drop in at a crucial juncture to help out the lead.

I had mixed feelings about the ending. Stolen works best when it leans into realism, which makes the experience so tense and fearful. And while I’m not against a film choosing a hopeful or more positive conclusion - especially when reality we live in feels too bleak - Stolen takes one or two steps too far into feel-good territory, making the resolution feel a little too convenient.

'Stolen' Movie Review - Final Thoughts

Stolen is a taut, nerve-wracking, realistic thriller that holds a mirror to a society teetering on the edge of hysteria. It doesn’t just tell the story of a missing child - it exposes the terrifying ease with which truth is discarded and judgment is delivered by mobs driven by fear and misinformation. While its slightly over-neat conclusion may soften the blow, it doesn’t take away from the film’s urgency or impact. Anchored by strong performances and a chilling sense of realism, Stolen leaves you shaken, questioning, and - most importantly - aware. Stolen is streaming on Prime Video.

(The opinions expressed in the above article are of the author and do not reflect the stand or position of LatestLY.)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 04, 2025 12:00 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).