Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
A five-year-old Indian boy gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia; 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.
Lion is elevated significantly by its performances, particularly Dev Patel and young Sunny Pawar, and by Roger Deakins-adjacent cinematography capturing both the chaos of Kolkata and the landscapes of Australia with real beauty. The true story at its heart is genuinely moving, but the film's structure — a gripping first half giving way to a more conventional identity-search drama in the second — limits its narrative ambition. The Google Earth device is distinctive but the emotional beats of the adult section follow a fairly predictable arc. The ending, while affecting, resolves in a way that feels slightly rushed given the buildup, and the real-life epilogue title cards do much of the heavy emotional lifting.