Nicolas Cage will be the first one to admit that he went through a phase of starring in pretty much every project that came his way, but he did make a point of saying he never phoned in a single performance. While the majority of them were sent straight to VOD, 2012’s Stolen scored a theatrical bow, which ended in complete failure and utter embarrassment.
There was some potential for the film to succeed, though, with Con Air and The Expendables 2 director Simon West at the helm, while screenwriter David Guggenheim was coming off the back of Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington’s box office success Safe House.
Cage headlines as an infamous bank robber and dedicated family man, who ends up being double crossed and captured when he’s betrayed by his partners after a $10 million heist. In one final act of defiance, he burns the cash before being taken into custody by the FBI.
Fast forward eight years, and his ex-partner that was believed to be dead has kidnapped his daughter, and he wants his $10 million back, without a care as to where it comes from. It’s all fairly standard stuff, but Stolen was gone from theaters before a lot of people even realized it was there.
In fact, it was pulled from multiplexes across the country after just two weeks in release, cobbling together a mere $304,000 domestically. It fared a great deal better overseas, but a global haul of $18 million on a $35 million budget was hardly a great return, and neither was the 20% Rotten Tomatoes score.
However, Stolen has been plotting its revenge on streaming this weekend per FlixPatrol, having managed to seize a place on the Paramount Plus Top 20 most-watched chart, even if the success is a decade too late.