SnoopyStyle 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.

Ed-Shullivan Warning: This movie should not be seen by anyone under the age of 16All parents and teenagers (16 years or older) should watch this movie in an effort to become more aware of your surroundings and to understand that evil predators exist amongst us. In real life, there remains thousands of parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, who have been left wondering what happened to their tiny angel(s) on that one tragic day that seemed to start out just like any other day, when the child was left unattended for just a few minutes only to go missing forever more. This is a tragedy and mystery that occurs every day across North America and we always think it won't happen to our own family.Stolen Lives is a movie that depicts a series of tragic events that occurred 50 years earlier when a good family man named Matthew Wakefield played by Josh Lucas, who is struggling to find work and keep his three young sons together as a family, makes a critical mistake and leaves one of his sons alone in the car for just a few minutes one evening. When Matthew returns to his car, his son is gone. Frantically he goes to the local sheriff for assistance but due to Matthew Wakefield's impropriety with a married woman on the evening his son went missing, and his son being mentally challenged, the sheriff is not very sympathetic nor interested in determining what happened to this young boy. It is a fact that back in the first half of the last century child abductions were not intelligently nor systematically investigated or documented to assess what we now know was the work and existence of serial killers. The movie smartly flips back and forth between the fifty year span of the two missing boys initial disappearances. Matthew Wakefield is seen searching for his lost son in the 1950's, and then the scene switches to the current period where detective Tom Adkins Sr is seen searching endlessly for clues into the disappearance of his young and innocent son. The movie provides us with comparisons between the two crimes. Mr. Wakefields lost son disappeared while he was left sleeping in their car, and then the director smartly takes us to current events and the scene flips to a period when an off duty detective named Tom Adkins Sr. played superbly by Jon Hamm takes his young son out to the local carnival for the afternoon and while sitting having some lunch in a trailer type diner he leaves his son alone for just 2 minutes so that he can use the diners rest room. When Detecive Adkins returns to his table his son has completely vanished with no clues, no witnesses, and most importantly, no son. The message I absorbed from these two tragic events is that child abductions have been occurring by serial killers who if not yet been arrested and that they will continue with their evil crimes if not caught. The outcome of these two tragic events that span 50 years is that families never recover and typically ones own guilt overpowers all other emotions as these crimes of opportunity could have been easily prevented. We as good parents have a certain level of trust and security in our own communities but unfortunately these two fathers were not attentive parents on just a single occasion. As a result of the fathers letting their guard down on just a single occasion they become victims and it causes a series of events that affect their own lives as well as the lives of their their extended families who also fall into despair, wondering and praying for their young angels to return home. Truth is however, that thousands of innocent children who are abducted are never found.We have recently learned of a few happy endings such as with the two unrelated discoveries of two missing children whose names are Jaycee Dugard and Shawn Hornbeck who were kidnapped and kept in captivity for years before they were eventually found and returned to their families, albeit many years later with their innocence tarnished forever. Stolen Lives is a movie I recommend to all families as long as their age is over 16. Whether you are married, single, have children, plan to have children in the future, or you are a babysitter minding your siblings, or minding a neighbor's children, please watch this movie. It will certainly hone your sense of responsibility and impress upon all of us how easily a brief lapse in judgement, or a misguided level of trust in humanity needs to be balanced with reality and a higher level of protection for our most blessed gift, our children. Serial killers exist more than we are prepared to comprehend and they prey on the weak and unassuming. This is a great movie with a great cast and the director laid out the movie and series of tragic events over 50 years superbly. Lets always keep our guard up and our children safe from these evil predators.

Desertman84 Stolen is an mystery thriller that stars Josh Lucas and Jon Hamm together with Rhona Mitra,Jimmy Bennett,James Van Der Beek,Marcus Thomas and Jessica Chastain.The story revolves around Detective Tom Adkins, a man haunted relentlessly by the disappearance of his ten-year-old son, Tommy, Jr. It was directed by Anders Anderson.A small-town policeman works to uncover the truth behind two crimes: the disappearance of his son eight years earlier, and a fifty-year-old homicide of another boy.No leads immediately turn up in that case, but he does receive an early-morning phone call that draws him to the mangled and mutilated remains of a young boy slain 50 years prior. Tom takes on the case in an attempt to find absolution, and a second tale evolves, set 50 before, involving a man named Matthew Wakefield and his son John. The baffling similarities between the Wakefield case and Tommy Jr.'s mysterious fate push Tom to the brink of sanity and ultimately lead him on a collision course with fate. Gradually, one step at a time, Tom stumbles onto the horrifying truth about what happened to his boy. Barely holding onto his sanity and bound by redemption, Adkins unravels the unspeakable truth behind what happened to his son.Presented in a barrenness, uninspired package, the film takes an interesting premise and turns it into an unforgivably predictable and flimsy genre.Hamm's and Lucas' performances are fine, but first-time director Anderson is heavy-handed and overwrought, portraying emotional turmoil with clichés.Too bad that it is far from being an average film because of it.

rooprect 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.