There’s an odd satisfaction that comes from watching genre films that use the narrative of stolen children. It’s a horrific, harsh reality, but Hollywood knows how to take the weighted drama of such and merge it with a revenge-cum-saviour mentality, creating the type of story where justice prevails in a way to make the escapism of a very true situation feel more so.
Adopting this temperament, but also hoping to weigh it down with a little emotionality, Stolen Girl has the best of intentions – and a hell of a surprising ending – but doesn’t quite know what personality it wants to adhere to across its 98 minutes. Kate Beckinsale (committed, but deserves better than this fare) leads the charge as the mother of the titular “stolen girl”, Mara, who, in the quickest of moments, takes her eye off her young daughter long enough to be snatched whilst out shopping one day. She’s understandably distraught that her four-year-old, Amina, is missing, and all signs point to her ex-husband, Karim (Arvin Kananian), who then clears his residence and returns to his homeland in Syria, presumably with Amina in tow.
As much as the law wish to intervene and help Mara in her time of distress, because Karim is Amina’s father there’s no actual crime that’s been committed, leaving Mara to wallow in despair as she lobbies for laws to prevent parents from kidnapping their own children. For over a decade she fights and continues to search for Amina’s whereabouts, which leads ex-marine Robeson (Scott Eastwood), a child abduction expert, to track her down and offer assistance in finding her daughter, if she helps them in return assist other parents in being reunited with their own stolen children.
With so much of the film’s first act devoted to Mara looking for Amina in a more grounded manner, it feels almost like a betrayal when Kas Graham and Rebecca Pollock‘s script shifts so dramatically to a more action-minded frame. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with Stolen Girl opting to follow the Taken route of action, but it initially feels as if James Kent‘s film is going to honour the subject matter, albeit however melodramatically, in a more simple fashion. Robeson’s entrance into the film brings about a bit more of an exaggerated mentality, where he and his partner, Carl (Jordan Duvigneau), teach Mara how to blend into the numerous international locations they travel to on their various missions, donning different wigs and costumes, whilst brandishing a weapon, transforming her into an action heroine of sorts in the process; Beckinsale, having had previous experience in such a genre, at least looks believable doing so.
Whilst she never stops looking for Amina or reminding Robeson why she’s helping him, it does feel like that, for a time, her motivations become secondary to a string of repetitive action sequences and a forced love angle between herself and Robeson – not helped by the fact that Beckinsale and Eastwood don’t exactly generate scorching chemistry. It’s all just a little bit too disjointed, and it’s a shame as both personalities of the film could have made way for either an emotional, dialogue-forward drama on a mother’s desperation to find her child, or a violent revenge actioner that, whilst perhaps disrespecting the subject, could have made way for a stylistic vehicle.
A message movie that sadly can’t convey what it wants to say effectively, Stolen Girl is basing itself around something that is truly disgusting and should remain constantly topical, but using it in the entertainment value it does, it undermines the goal it sets for itself. There are moments of promise, but never enough conviction to stay in any of the lanes it sets for itself.
TWO STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Stolen Girl is now available on VOD in the United States and streaming on Prime Video in Australia.
