Mad Men’s Jon Hamm makes a powerful impression as star of Stolen, a gripping feature drama about the ultimate parental nightmare, the disappearance of a child.
Costarring Josh Lucas and James Van Der Beek, the picture, written by Glenn Taranto and directed by Anders Anderson, is a meditation on loss wrapped in a time-jumping detective tale – sort of a heartland Gone Baby Gone.
Hamm is Tom Adkins, a small-town police sergeant whose son was lured away from a diner and kidnapped while Adkins paid a quick visit to the restroom. A child’s skeletal remains, found in a toy box unearthed at a construction site, sets Adkins on a trail of discovery regarding not just his own family but that of a Matthew Wakefield, whose son was snatched away similarly a half-century before.
The suspense is cleverly unconventional in that Adkins is unraveling mysteries that have been unraveled for the viewer moments before. But the story’s emotional fulcrum is less in its crime revelations than in the fate of the depressed, self-blaming Adkins and his marriage to Barbara (Rhona Mitra). An actor as well as director, Anderson is at his best in rendering the unhurried, understatedly written scenes of the couple’s brittle domestic life. They have their routines — jogging, breakfast, work, etc. — but are shells of people, devastated not just by the crime against their family but even more so by the uncertainty of their son’s fate. Hamm and Mitra deliver beautifully rendered, wisely paced, hollow-eyed portrayals that imbue with palpable sorrow roles that could have become melodramatic gothic types.
Andy Steinman’s cinematography enhances the somber mood in his yellowed palette of contrasting sunshine and shadows, a bittersweet visual constant between the town then and the town now. Cleanly edited dissolve effects carry key objects — a whistle, a box, a trinket — from one era to the next. The past’s pall over the present is furthered by the script’s biblical overtones: location names like Barnstable, which everyone pronounces “barn stable”; New Testament character names; Wakefield’s nickname (Christian); and the morality-tale consequences of infidelity and drink. Add the Independence Day carnival festivities surrounding a boy’s disappearance, and the sum amounts to a doleful portrait of American dreams looking American nightmares in the mirror.
Lucas’s Wakefield is endearing in his earnestness and his vulnerability. And Van Der Beek, as Wakefield’s more-educated construction-work pal, has, for the most part, a sharp charismatic edge to him. One character’s aging — in acting and makeup — is, unfortunately, not too persuasively done, undermining the impact of a key plot point. Overall, though, the film packs a moody punch, and along with Hamm’s superb Mad Men credentials, might best be remembered years from now as a distinct and estimable step on his way to a broader and big-screen stardom.
Source
