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Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 12 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 8 Ratings

  • Summary: Work has become an obsession for Detective Tom Adkins since the disappearance of his ten-year-old son, Tommy Jr. When an early morning phone call leads him to the mangled remains of a young boy who was brutally murdered 50 years ago, Adkins takes on the case in hopes of finding absolution. His investigation leads him to a man who lived in 1958 named Matthew Wakefield and his innocent son, John. The striking similarities in the cases pushes Adkins' obsession over the top. Barely holding onto his sanity and bound by redemption, Adkins unravels the unspeakable truth behind what happened to his son. (IFC Entertainment) Expand
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 12
  2. Negative: 3 out of 12
  1. This gravely serious drama is as insular as a tomb with Muzak. It takes a particularly heavy hand to make us numb to the abduction of two children, but that's the effect of the wall-to-wall music and earnestly dour performances.
  2. 50
    James Van Der Beek plays the same suspect over a 50-year period, sporting some of the worst old-age makeup in memory in the present-day sequences.
  3. 50
    Not a masterpiece, perhaps, but technically polished, with inspired performances and enough suspense that by the time Mr. Hamm found the redemption that freed him from his own demons, I was so wired I needed a Valium.
  4. It's uncertain whether or not Taranto and debuting helmer Anders Anderson looked at the "Law & Order: SVU" and "Cold Case" episodes that also used the crime as a plot thread; the sub-televisual incompetence of their film suggests not.

See all 12 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. 10
    I actually enjoyed this movie. I was empathetic to the lead characters, all of whom I felt gave respectable performances. I liked the concept of the parallel stories of the two missing boys and thought the unravelling of the clues which leads Hamm to solving the case of his missing son was paced in such a way as to keep the viewer's interest in the story. A decent movie worthy of renting for some entertainment. Expand
  2. When you watch a lot of independent and direct-to-video films, you see a lot of garbage, but occasionally you find a gem that makes it all worthwhile, Stolen, is one of those gems. This story was so intriguing and well written that I was absolutely blown away. The film is about a detective whose son went missing, without a trace, eight years ago. The trail is cold and he's beginning to accept that he will never find him, when a local construction crew finds a boy in a box. The body has been there for at least fifty years, but the case awakens something in the detective who has to learn the truth. From there, quite ingeniously, the film is divided into three different stories, the story of the boy in the box, the detectives investigation, and the story of his own child. It was seriously like watching three different movies at once, and they were all great! The cast was pretty phenomenal too, as this was a very hard thing to pull off, but they did it seemingly with ease. Josh Lucas just blew my mind, giving an unrivaled performance as the father of the other missing boy. I've seen him in things before, but nothing was as memorable as this. Stolen is a film that consists of three stories in once, that will pull on your emotions and have you on the edge of your seat. It's one of the best films I've seen all year and I can't recommend it enough! Expand

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