Thrillers have lengthy been OTT catnip—gun-toting, knife-wielding heroes, anti-heroes wading by means of murky conspiracies. However lets, for a minute, go all the best way again. From mild, frothy hybrid thrillers of the early many years of Hindi cinema—equal elements music and thriller—to morally complicated tales right this moment, Bollywood thrillers have come a long way. The song-heavy, glamorous, plot-twisty whodunnits of the 50s and 60s gave method to the populist, political, conspiratorial thrillers of the ’70s and ’80s. By the ’90s, the style misplaced form, devolving into pulpy, gimmicky star automobiles.
The 2000s introduced a revival of types. We have been served thrillers that trusted our intelligence, leaned on craft, and reduce the surplus. Streaming gave the style one other increase. Tales within the style right this moment are extra grounded and morally ambiguous.
However there’s additionally a flip aspect. Thrillers right this moment try to tackle an excessive amount of—folding in social critique, political commentary, media satire, private drama, and what have you ever. And when thrillers wander throughout too many lanes, they danger shedding the one factor they’ll’t do with out: pressure.
For a survival thriller, the stakes are even larger. Watching weak, morally disengaged characters—who know they’re up in opposition to one thing that may’t be negotiated with, solely destroyed—might be harrowing but in addition vicariously releasing. However the sub-genre itself might be tough. The characters are few, and the setting is restricted. There’s not lots to work with, rendering the narrative linear, one-note.
With Stolen, we get a survival thriller juggling so many concepts, you are concerned the movie may collapse beneath its personal ambition. Class battle, corruption, bureaucratic rot, social media paranoia, misinformation. Surprisingly and fortunately, regardless of its thematic sprawl, the movie manages to carry all of it collectively right into a taut, coherent complete.
We’re dropped straight into the chaos: a faintly lit railway station at midnight. A toddler of a marginalized girl vanishes, pulling a younger, city sibling duo—there by likelihood—into the spiraling aftermath.
And rapidly, the thriller thriller morphs into one thing bigger. A category battle of privileged vs poor. There are such a lot of layers—visible, thematic—that come remarkably undone because the movie progresses.
Cinematographer Isshaan Ghosh’s shaky, handheld digicam maintains an invasive gaze conserving us near the motion and the characters. We really feel complicit, but by no means totally knowledgeable.
For a debut function, director Karan Tejpal showcases early mastery of area and time, two necessities in a thriller. An excellent one is akin to an awesome piece of music. It is aware of easy methods to modulate pressure—constructing, releasing, deceptive—with out being one unbroken excessive pitch of suspense. As Hitchcock put it splendidly to Truffaut:
If you wish to ‘play the viewers like a violin’, you may’t be battering away on the strings on a regular basis.
A masterclass in pressure constructing, Stolen hits all the fitting notes.
It makes use of spatial limits to crank up the stress equally effectively. The movie cleverly tasks the nervousness of its characters externally into the bodily area round them. Places nearly function plot units. The vehicular confines, the tough terrains and slim alleyways of the village are all used to stifling impact.
Tejpal tells the story with outstanding restraint with out tamping down the drama.
Stolen additionally handles the category critique with nuance. It isn’t tokenistic or lazy and resists simple catharsis that has come to outline movies on this area. The commentary sits within the tone and subtext — not in dialogues or heavy handed exposition; it’s extra intuitive than spelled out.
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Working adjoining to ‘eat the wealthy’ theme (nearly verging on a recognizable style of its personal), the movie by no means caricatures its privileged characters or presents them as outright villains or horrible individuals (entitled, sure!) that almost all movies on this style fall prey to. They’re flawed, complicit, but in addition human.
Usually seen in lighter, comical roles, Abhishek Banerjee (Gautam) is revelatory in a tense, contained area. I watched Mia Maelzer (Jhumpa) stability the quiet and the ferocious with wide-eyed surprise. Shubham Vardhan’s (Raman) clipped, restrained supply brilliantly conveyed his fixed tussle between guilt and empathy.
Survival thrillers are a uncommon style (NH10, Trapped) in Bollywood and when finished effectively, they remind us {that a} good one wants craft and management, not scale and extra.
The place to Watch: Prime Video
