A great movie wanting to come out of the editing room didn't make it.

Rating: 3/10 (29 January 2017)

The first part of Lion I would give a 9, unfortunately the second part is in the minus numbers, dragging this whole affair into a frustrating thing where you see greatness just out of reach because it appears the studio wanted a shorter movie. That could be wrong about the studio being the cause, but the problem is there anyways. The second part of the movie where we meet up with the big award hype around Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman's parts in the movie is equal parts confusing and overly melodramatic. The melodrama is caused by the audience not being given enough to understand why they are acting the way they do, and the confusion is caused by the same. It jumps all over the place without allowing enough to fill in their stories. How can you follow a story when big chunks of the motivation are were left on the cutting room floor? I imagine there is going to be a directors cut that will flesh out the second part of the movie and make that part watchable, because as it stands it is not. The first part is really well done in every way, but maybe it also could have been a bit longer in certain parts because there was just so much great drama there. So it is hard to understand the acting accolades for Dev Patel when most of his scenes have him acting in ways that left me feeling like I was only hearing one side of a phone conversation because his emotional tone was all over the place, his concerns were all over the place, the drama was all over the place - and we are not given much to know the details on why? That was less so for Nicole Kidman, but her part also left a lot to be desired.