Stolen's crisp running time and Abhishek Banerjee's metamorphosis from callous to crusader ensure the stark bits duly haunt and horrify, observes Sukanya Verma.
In a country bursting at its seams, where dissatisfaction is a perennial feeling among the underclass and prospect is solely reserved for the privileged, sanity hangs by a thread.
And when all hell does break loose, it's not just those numb to the pain of being brushed off but even the blameless that will find themselves crushed under the aftermath of blind rage.
There's no justifying mob lynching.
There's no understanding it either.
What triggers a large group of people to attack a single person, in most cases not guilty of the alleged crime, and unleash their dormant animal and defend it as justice?
Fear? Hate? Politics?
All these terms are beginning to sound the same as the world grows more and more volatile in its dealings.
First-time director Karan Tejpal's thriller dwells gently on the topic inspired from real events that transpired in Assam not too long ago.
Back in 2018, a sound engineer and his entrepreneur friend became fatal targets of mob lynching caused by social media panic that led the village folk of Karbi Anglong district to assume they were a pair of child lifters.
Armed with his battery of frequent long take (shot by Isshaan Ghosh) and actors capable of becoming one with the background, Tejpal and co-writers Gaurav Dhingra and Swapnil Salkar capture the harrowing journey of a pair of brothers out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Gautam (Abhishek Banerjee), the older one, couldn't care less about what goes on within the fringes of society.
He's distracted by his mother's wedding, not realising the logistic nightmare he's resolving on the phone is nothing compared to the heartland horrors that lie ahead.
Though no less urban in his existence and privileges, younger brother Raman (Shubham Vardhan packs in a mix of gullible and humane) harbours empathy for the subjugated lot.
At the receiving end of one brother's sympathy and another's suspicion is a woman (a stormy Mia Maelzer), who has lost her five month old baby at the railway platform of a fictional remote region that looks like Rajasthan (filmed in Pushkar) and feels like Haryana.
It's also where the kidnapping drama kicks off in the wee hours of the night that's dragged through all of the next day.
More than police brutality, it's the arrogance exhibited by the men in khaki that complicates a crisis, knowing there's no means to contain misinformation spreading like wildfire.
Reminiscent of NH10 in its belief of how quickly things can go south and unsettling degree of threats popping around from every corner of a seemingly sleepy village, it's the volatile energy of the narrative as the brothers find themselves scrambling for survival that lends Stolen its anxiety and heft.
As confident his filmmaking is, Tejpal's enthusiasm for dark revelations and questionable impulses often result in a shift of tone that goes from a run-for-your-life thriller to sudden slice-of-morality amidst surrogacy scams and awakened conscience.
Mostly though, it's the vaguely-established history of estranged ties between Gautam and Raman and their mother's remarriage that fails to add any layers to the storytelling.
Nevertheless, Stolen's crisp running time and Abhishek Banerjee's metamorphosis from callous to crusader -- even when the writing hinges on contrived -- ensure the stark bits duly haunt and horrify.
Stolen streams on Amazon Prime Video.
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