Review of Stolen (2012) by Kurt B — 05 Oct 2012

Bottom: hit. What is a good idea to basically rip-off of Taken is turned into a new low for Nicolas Cage. I'll even give that the story could have been good if it were dialed down a bit. But with a director in Simon West, who started with Con-Air and has worsened with every movie until this, Stolen is a costly lesson that maybe he's not going to get any better.

Will Montgomery, Nicolas Cage, is a criminal who steals a bunch of money, causes a big "this is it" heist to go bad, and serves 8-years for his part. When he gets out, one of his partners, who has some obvious and HUGE psychological problems, wants his share of the $10 million dollars he's owed, but was never found. The FBI thinks Montgomery is crying wolf as a ploy to get them off his back long enough to get his money out of hiding and the bad guy has his daughter and will kill her in 24 hours if Will doesn't come up with the cash. Aaaaaand ACTION!

Kinda. The story is so crazy and poorly put together that it's not even worth trying to follow. The villain needs lots of therapy. There is nothing rational about what he's doing or why and it's as if he's popping in and out of this movie and another one and confusing the scripts. There is no suspense, because anything that may be a cool twist is made so blatantly obvious that you know everything coming.

Nicolas Cage's fans have trickled out the door, and unless he gets back to making good films soon, they're not coming back. This $37-million movie didn't even make $500 thousand. His acting reflects how bad he knew Stolen was going to be. Danny Huston was on auto-pilot and didn't contribute anything to Stolen, and Josh Lucas was all over the place as the baddie. I have no clue what happened to Malin Akerman that she had to take this role. Two years ago she was in $100 million movies and now this? She either pissed a lot of people off or owed someone a big favor. How did she do? It really doesn't matter in a movie like this.

Obviously I'm not going to recommend this movie to anyone. I just don't know if I'm saddened or upset by Cage's career path. COME BACK TO ME NICK!