Lion

Australian director Garth Davis makes his feature debut with this drastically uneven biopic of Saroo Brierley, an Indian-born man who was tragically separated from his family as a child, only reconnecting with his roots after an exhaustive, years-long internet search. The first half of Lion, which follows young Saroo as he boards an empty train that tragically whisks him thousands of miles away, tracking his nightmarish experiences alone on the streets of Calcutta, is rote but riveting stuff. Unfortunately, nearly the entire second half is devoted to the adult Saroo’s obsessive scouring of the internet for his real family, and the net effect is an hour straight of Dev Patel playing with Google Earth, while Nicole Kidman goes awards-slumming in an awful wig as Saroo’s adoptive Australian mother. Davis and screenwriter Luke Davies aggressively strum the heartstrings, but the film falters as it focuses more on product placement than people. D.B.