Review of Lion (2015) by Patricia W — 30 Sep 2017

Lion, is based on the real story of Saroo who, as a little boy in rural India, got lost on a train and hurtled thousands of miles away to Calcutta. After being adopted by an Australian couple, years later as an adult, Saroo goes on a frantic search to find his home and be re-united with his family.

First of all, Sunny Pawar, who plays young Saroo, is absolutely excellent in this film and carries a good 2/3 almost on his own, homeless on the streets, desperately trying to get by and get back to his family.

Then Dev Patell puts in a great performance as the adult Saroo who becomes fixated on finding his family, searching the railway lines without even knowing the name of his village. It is an extremely emotional story, seeing how callous most of the adults are towards the homeless children, the pain of separation for Saroo and the love and acceptance of his adoptive parents.

The film does start to lose steam in the last third of the film however with Saroo as an adult, with an somewhat uninteresting love story and the addition of his seemingly unstable adoptive brother. Overall though it is a very touching film, that focusses on the emotional trauma of a lost child and even goes so far as highlighting that over 80,000 children go missing in India every year and collaborating with organisations to support these children.