Sorry, this movie sucks

Fresh and Exciting

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Police detective Tom Adkins Sr. (Jon Hamm) loses his son Tommy at a country fair. Eight years later, a boy's body is dug up by a construction crew but it's not his missing son. His wife Barbara (Rhona Mitra) is breaking down. The body turns out to be 50 years old and Adkins starts investigating. In flashbacks, Matthew Wakefield (Josh Lucas)'s farm is foreclosed and his wife commits suicide. He and his sons Mark, Luke, and mentally handicap John struggle to find their place in the world.This is filled with some solid actors. The present day story is dull. The investigation is not compelling although the past is better. Josh Lucas delivers an interesting flawed character. His unraveling throughout the movie is intriguing. The old-man makeup is distracting. It would be simpler to use a real elderly man. The eyes always give it away. This movie is a bit of a muddle that works sometimes but doesn't always add up to be good. The twisty multi-suspects do get tiresome. I wouldn't mind a clear story about Matthew struggling to keep his family together.

We were given a mystery within a mystery. The director lead us into the emotional pain of parents who have lost a child, only to be given a clue as to the resolve for their missing child through the discovery of the probably first missing child in the list to be compiled by the Serial Killer. It's complexity are the clues that are so cleverly left as you watch the movie, leaving you with so many unanswered questions when the credits appear and you know, there is more and the opportunity to explore has ended. Excellent movie displaying a visual unspoken story of what to look for in a child molester, and what would provoke the death of a child. Now, I want to find the book, the original story. There is more within to help answer my questions.

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!

The plot is pretty simple: a man who is searching for his lost son gets wrapped up in a parallel mystery from 50 years earlier. It isn't intended to be a Hitchcockian thriller with lots of action, twists & turns, but instead it's a great character study into the mind of a man who borders on obsession. It asks the questions: when are we supposed to let go, and if we do pursue closure, at what cost? Over the course of his many-year investigation, the man's life becomes a total mess, and in that respect we see some interesting parallels with the excellent Clint Eastwood film "In the Line of Fire" (about a secret service agent who fails to save JFK and who is tasked with foiling a similar assassination decades later). Both films ask us what is the difference between perseverance and obsession? The answer, even after the credits roll, is up to you.Something I really liked about this film is the way the director used surrealism to blend the two timelines, 1958 and 2008. Scenes would blend seamlessly from one to the other. For example, there's one shot in a bar where the camera flows through the room beginning in 2008 and ending in 1958 without any cuts. This subtle style, in addition to the underlying mystery of the whole story, forces the audience to keep on their toes.The basic plot is pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of background questions & themes that are not as obvious. These questions give the film substance. Religion is a minor theme that crops up visually in the form of crucifixes and subtle lighting effects. Guilt is another subtle yet powerful theme. I also sense a bit of existentialism in that the heroes are subjected to some rotten luck without any apparent rhyme or reason, and it is only through the individuals' strength of character that they manage to make it through the day. In all, there's a ton of stuff going on, and if you like your films to be full of philosophy and questions of morality, this will be a real treat for you.Other great films worth checking out are "Changeling" (2008) about a woman searching for her lost son, "A Very Long Engagement" (2004) about a woman searching for a soldier reportedly killed in action, the aforementioned "In the Line of Fire" (1993) about a secret service agent trying to redeem himself for losing JFK, and a wonderful unknown gem called "Into Temptation" (2009) about a priest trying to find a suicidal confessor before it's too late.