Movie review: little Sunny completely overshadows Dev Patel in 'Lion'

"Lion" plays with the idea of a duality in self-identity, and in the cultural spiritual and geographical existence for its protagonist Saroo with an enrapturing earnestness. Davis and his writer Luke Davis walk that extra mile to penetrate into the deepest recesses of the diasporic heart. The film is unabashedly sentimental and, dare one say, unapologetically manipulative, specially in the first hour of playing-time when little Saroo is lost to the world. His world of his mother (Priyanka Bose) and his elder brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate). The images of little Saroo racing in an empty train that hurls him into the unknown, and then trying to find his way through the cold almost impersonal crowds of Kolkata, are profoundly moving. The lost child is a distant cousin of Chetan Anand's 'Aakhri Khat', although he doesn't even know it. Cinematographer Greig Fraser's view of Kolkata is very different from the way the city was shot in Roland Joffee' "City Of Joy" 25 years ago. There is more of everything in the Kolkata of "Lion", including corruption, debauchery and child abuse. The images of little Saroo trying to survive in the pitiless city are harrowing and magnificent.