Stolen (2025) Review!!

Synopsis – Two urbane brothers witness a baby being kidnapped from an impoverished mother at a railway station in rural India. One guided by moral duty, convinces the other to help the mother and join a perilous investigation to find the baby.

My Take – Every once in a while, between a plethora of wide releases starring mostly known faces their comes a smaller film which arrives with little or no fanfare, but then hits you like a ton of bricks.

Such is the case of this latest Prime Video release, which has been winning accolades in the international festival circuit since 2023 and whose story works within a web of complicated twists that starts off with a child abduction and then leads to social media driven mob lynching.

Directed by debutante Karan Tejpal and starring Abhishek Banerjee, a casting director and Indian actor who has become a household name following his scene-stealing performances in Maddock Supernatural Universe films and as Hathoda Tyagi in Season 1 of the Prime Video series ‘Paatal Lok‘, this latest taut edge-of-the-seat survival thriller keeps you on the edge without ever raising its voice. A film that maintains a raw and real atmosphere, making the audience feel every bit of the characters’ ordeal as they face the uncomfortable gap between urban and rural India that coexist but rarely collide.

Yes, the brothers’ repeated confrontations with angry villagers gets a bit repetitive, yet the tight pacing ensures that this one remains ceaselessly engaging and an exhilarating experience from start to finish.

Executive produced by Anurag Kashyap, Kiran Rao, Vikramaditya Motwane and Nikkhil Advani, at its core, this one is not just a thriller or a chase film, instead it’s about the fragility of assumptions, and the invisible wall between those who can demand answers and those who are forced to beg for them. This isn’t just one of the strongest debuts in recent Indian cinema; it’s also a film that makes a fierce case for the relevance of political thrillers in an era of noise under the guide of commercial entertainers.

Set over the course of one harrowing night, the story follows Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee), the older of the two brothers, who comes to the station to pick up Raman (Shubham Vardhan), who’s arriving by train after missing a flight to their mother’s destination wedding. The mood is casual at first, but things escalate quickly when a villager young mother named Jhumpa (Mia Maelzer) wakes up to find her five-month-old baby Champa missing.

In her panic, she accuses Raman of stealing the child, after all he’s holding the woolen cap she was wearing and claims to have found it on the ground after crashing into a hurrying woman. The police, led by the enigmatic Panditji (Harish Khanna), intervene, and the misunderstanding is cleared up, but the case isn’t closed.

A tea seller nearby is overheard discussing the incident on the phone, and soon the authorities trace the baby’s possible abductors. What follows next is a tense, disorienting sequence of events as the brothers, particularly Raman, are pulled deeper into a situation that begins to spiral out of control.

What unfolds from here is a tightly wound, real-time thriller in which two privileged men from the city are dragged into a world that operates on suspicion, rage and class-caste fault lines. Here, director Karan Tejpal‘s debut feature doesn’t just lift the lid on the terrifying aftershocks of mob hysteria, it throws the viewer headfirst into the mayhem, refusing to pause, explain or offer a safe corner. Inspired by the 2018 lynching of two men in Assam, falsely accused of being child traffickers, the film draws its urgency from the horror of real events, there are no unnecessary detours or flashbacks; the narrative is tight, focused, and keeps the tension consistently high.

Even the police offer no relief. They’re not villains, but they don’t inspire trust either. To make matters worse, Jhumpa is a picture of anguish, but also contradiction. She seems to want justice, but her version of events keeps shifting. Her presence, which initially evokes sympathy, slowly begins to acquire layers that unsettle even as they intrigue.

Equally impressive is its keen understanding of sibling dynamics. Gautam is the quintessential first child—responsible, a problem-solver, pragmatic, and profoundly protective of his younger brother, who has a worldview starkly different from his own. A photographer who is still mourning a major personal loss, Raman is idealistic to the point of being naive.

Moved by her pain, insists Raman they help. Gautam, wary of where this is headed, would rather get out while they still can. That moral tug-of-war between empathy and self-preservation, idealism and pragmatism becomes the film’s thumping heart.

Written by Karan Tejpal, Gaurav Dhingra and Swapnil Salkar, the script has a lot to say. Without underlining its intent, it places the audience face-to-face with India’s fault lines: how easily a man’s guilt is assumed because of where he is, or who he’s with; how quickly a woman’s tragedy becomes a tool; how institutional apathy creates space for vigilante violence.

The film brings to the fore a smattering of primitive problems that continue to plague modern India—wildfire-like spread of misinformation via WhatsApp, illegal surrogacy, child trafficking, mob frenzy and lynching. The film effectively portrays how the marginalized are often met with suspicion and doubt, even when they are victims, highlighting systemic issues without being preachy.

Performance wise, Abhishek Banerjee has received widespread acclaim and deservingly so. His portrayal of a man accustomed to getting his way, who slowly realizes his lack of control in a desperate situation, is cited as excellent and nuanced.

Shubham Vardhan also contributes significantly to the dynamic, showcasing a more empathetic and insistent approach to doing the right thing. His calm, grounded presence gives the film its emotional balance. Mia Maelzer makes you feel her agony. Her turn is stripped of all artifice—just raw panic, grief, and desperation, even without many lines. On the whole, ‘Stolen’ is a taut emotionally charged thriller anchored by its gripping narrative and stellar performances.