Garth Davis’ Lion isn’t just an emotional film which will tear you up inside, but also a heartwarming mother-son tale that offers a compelling, refreshing take on the trite idea of never being able to reunite with families. Go ahead and watch it.

There is nothing glorious about poverty, and every time you fear Garth Davis may resort to a trick like that, he stays away.

These aren’t pleasant thoughts, and in that respect, Lion is not a pleasant film, however cathartic that ending may be. But thank God it exists. We need more films like it, like Slumdog, to shame us into being better by showing us our worst, and to inspire us into being brave, by showing us our best.

Keeping a few glitches aside, it’s not unfair to say that Lion, which is based on ‘A Long Way Home’ by Saroo Brierley, is a story that will stay with you once you walk out of the cinema hall. It will evoke turmoil within the boundaries of your restricted mind, making you ponder upon the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what nots’ of Sheru (Saroo), the Lion.

Lion isn’t a thunderous roar. It’s more a soulful, reassuring purr that reverberates gently into the recesses of the heart, curls up in a cozy place, and works its subtle magic. In one word, magnificent.

Sad yet uplifting, frightening yet inspirational, Lion breaks your heart into a thousand pieces and puts them back together in the end. It makes you believe in miracles and embrace hardships by celebrating courage and resilience in its own unique way.

It doesn’t exactly make you roar in applause, but it does leave you with a lump in your throat at some points during the film. Sunny Pawar is a revelation. Watch this one for him.

Lion is best to be watched with a box of tissues at hand. Little Sunny Pawar’s class act and Saroo Brierley’s true story are sure to leave you in tears. This is a film worth watching for its interesting journey of survival.

Movies like Slumdog Millionaire and Life Of Pi have excelled before with their Indian settings. But even those celebrated movies haven’t had the pure intimacy of Lion. This one’s a gem of a film. One that takes an already spectacular story and turns it into an absolute sublime experience. Those multiple Oscar nominations are much deserved.

With the pros overwhelming overpowering the cons, LION roars its way in the list of Hollywood movies that can make Indians and Indian filmmakers proud for its theme like AVATAR (based on reincarnation), SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (a Hollywood potboiler inspired by Bollywood masalas and the prolific Manmohan Desai’s lost and found themes) in ‘real’ sense as this Garth Davis adaptation of ‘A Long Way Home’ by Saroo Brierley and Larry Buttrose is undeniably a story that deserves to be told and is told in a universally appealing, emotionally charging and cinematically uplifting manner.

This thoroughly absorbing film delves deeper to give this child a story, a name, and a face. This India portion, at least in the version I watched, has been shot in Hindi. Which is a huge relief, if you were expecting basic modicum of respect for authenticity in a film based on a true-life account — Saroo Brierley’s non-fiction novel A Long Way Home — about a 5-year-old who accidentally gets separated from his mother, a quarry worker (Priyanka Bose; outstanding!), and his brother, to find himself eventually adopted by white parents in Australia.

In any case this is an effective drama with themes universal in nature. The most fundamentally basic human characteristic is to reach out to one’s family and there’s nothing more heartbreaking to see the bond ripped apart by forces alien to the human.

Overall, if you are a sucker for those lost-and-found formula movies, executed with a more realistic approach and laced by bravura performances, Lion should be your go to film. The performances by Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel stay with you long after the film ends.

Impressive even awe-inspiring in its emotional velocity Lion is a film that will stay with you for a long time. At a time when Indian cinema has become distinctly shy of wearing the heart on the sleeve here is a film that just lets it all hang out unconditionally and wholeheartedly.