Stolen

Stolen tells two stories, separated by fifty years, that collide together and mirror each other in very neat, tidy, and obvious ways. The narrative is smoothly constructed, but at the expense of crafting a compelling narrative. Stolen is more concerned with a series of closed-circuit repeating imagery than creating a more nondescript story.

First-time director Anders Anderson makes for a decent debut, it’s watchable if nothing else. But much of that credit goes to a solid ensemble of actors who are trying their best to make something out of this middling material. Jon Hamm stars as a detective obsessed with his son’s disappearance eight years prior. When a body is discovered, he assumes that it is his son’s remains, only to be the body of a boy who disappeared fifty years ago. The two crimes are linked, obviously, but Hamm does his best to display this man’s growing struggle for closure and how this case has become a coping mechanism for the death of his child.

Josh Lucas is the father of the boy who disappeared in the flashback story, the obsessions of the two men, and their frantic behavior to find their sons, feel like inevitable mirror images of each other instead of interesting parallels. Perhaps the major problem is that Anderson tips his hand so often that the man responsible is glaringly pointed out, his character might as well be wearing a flashing neon sign for the duration of the film. Or maybe it’s a problem of tone – the film positions itself as a serious examination of obsession with a story that is loosely inspired by true events, but plays out like an overly long episode of a procedural.