While persistently accompanying his older brother to his night job, a young Indian boy loses steam and falls asleep at a train station, where he is left until the end of the shift. Awakened in the middle of the night, he boards an abandoned train which carries him thousands of miles away to Calcutta where he is swept up into an orphanage and, after a cursory search for his family, sent to live with an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham). Twenty years later (now played by Dev Patel), living happily as a student and at the urging of his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) and with the aid of newfound online GPS technology, he desperately attempts to jog his memory and locate his birth family. Lion is extremely well-filmed and effective Oscar bait (in what is really a can't miss story), which is actually fairly involving until the introduction of the principal cast about halfway through, though Patel and Kidman's performance are in earnest.
*** out of ****
