Perhaps that accounts for this movie’s shortcomings, or perhaps the fault lies in Luke Davies’ screenplay. Director Garth Davis has worked in television and won acclaim for his commercials but is a newcomer to feature films. I’m a sucker for honest sentiment and wasn’t immune to this, but I still felt annoyed that it took so long to get to this point. Suffice it to say, the final sequence pulls out all the emotional stops and tears begin to flow.
Rooney Mara has a thankless role as the young man’s girlfriend who, like us, tries to understand what’s going on inside his head as he torments himself wondering if he should pursue his origins. The dramatization of Saroo’s inner conflict is hazy and takes far too long to resolve. Nicole Kidman and David Wenham are also good as his adoptive parents, and Dev Patel does a solid job as the adult Saroo. The little boy who plays Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is miraculously good the camera loves him. Only then does he start to feel the pull of his past and wonder about trying to find his real family. Eventually he is adopted by a kind Australian couple who raise him to manhood. He is lost in more ways than one: he doesn’t even speak Hindi, the local language, and cannot correctly pronounce the name of his hometown to those who want to help him. Predictably, he falls asleep on a railroad station platform and when he awakens, boards an empty train that suddenly roars to life, taking him more than a thousand miles away from home.
Precocious to a fault and always wanting to help earn money for his family, he insists on accompanying his brother on a nighttime run. It introduces us to a lovable 5-year-old boy named Saroo who lives in poverty with his mother, sister, and big brother in a small Indian village. Lion spins a tale that would do credit to any author of fiction. I say this with regret, because the true story it tells is remarkable and it’s a shame the film is flawed. What do you call a movie that has a great first act and a moving finale but bogs down on the way to that conclusion? In this case, you call it Lion.
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