Film review: Life-affirming drama based on true story

Released: January 20 (UK & Ireland)

Home is where the heart is, but when memories of that place of sanctuary are cruelly stolen at an early age, can you truly be at peace?

One man's extraordinary true-life odyssey - to locate the birth mother and older brother he lost at the age of five - provides the inspiration for Garth Davis' life-affirming drama, which looks set for recognition in multiple categories at next month's Academy Awards.

Screenwriter Luke Davies has skilfully adapted the non-fiction book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley, elegantly cutting back and forth between traumatic events more than 20 years apart to accompany the lead character on his seemingly hopeless quest for emotional closure.

Dev Patel and Sunny Pawar are both terrific as the 26-year-old and five-year-old incarnations of Saroo, who is unexpectedly transplanted from Khandwa, where family and friends speak Hindi, to the giddy whirl of Calcutta, where residents speak Bengali, and then onto Australia.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser captures these three locations on two continents in rich and meticulous detail, providing a compelling backdrop to the heart-wrenching trials and tribulations that will reduce audiences to puddles of saltwater emotion.

Saroo (Sunny Pawar) lives in 1987 Khandwa with his mother Kamla (Priyanka Bose) and siblings.

The five-year-old idolises his 12-year-old brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) and the two boys embark on a night-time excursion to the local railway station.

A horrible twist of fate separates the children and Saroo is trapped aboard a train, which heads 1,600km east to the bustling shanty towns of Calcutta.

Unable to speak the language, the boy eventually meets Saroj Sood (Deepti Naval), who runs the Indian Society for Sponsorship and Adoption and places him with adoptive parents John and Sue Brierley (David Wenham, Nicole Kidman) in Hobart, Tasmania.

Many years later, Saroo (now played by Patel) is enrolled on a course at the Royal Melbourne College of Hotel Management and casually confesses details of his past to other Indian students.

They encourage him to use online satellite mapping software to trace the railway line from Calcutta back west.

Fellow student Lucy (Rooney Mara) pledges her support to Saroo, whose studies suffer as he stares at pixels on his laptop screen, looking in vain for a station with a water tower that might be Khandwa.

Lion is a majestic, heartfelt drama that delivers an almighty emotional wallop as Saroo gradually pieces together his past.

Director Davis deftly moves between timeframes as he elicits riveting performances from Patel, Pawar and Kidman as a proud mother who will never stand in the way of her beautiful boy tracing his bloodline.

If a few stony-hearted souls remain steadfastly dry-eyed to the end, real-life footage over the credits and an explanation of the film's enigmatic title set to the soaring vocals of Australian chart-topper Sia, will prize open the floodgates.

:: NO SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 8.5/10

xXx: RETURN OF XANDER CAGE (12A, 107 mins) Action/Thriller. Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Toni Collette, Deepika Padukone, Ruby Rose, Kris Wu, Rory McCann, Nina Dobrev, Tony Jaa, Michael Bisping, Samuel L Jackson. Director: D.J. Caruso.

Released: January 19 (UK & Ireland)

If you can't beat James Bond, join him with special effects-laden gusto, innuendo-laden dialogue and outdated gender stereotypes.

So says xXx: Return Of Xander Cage, the action-packed third chapter of a testosterone-fuelled franchise, which welcomes back the rippling abs of Vin Diesel as the titular extreme sports enthusiast more than 10 years after a second film in the series foundered without him.

Screenwriter F Scott Frazier spells out a simple methodology through one of his thinly sketched characters: "Kick some ass, get the girl and try to look dope doing it."

There are plenty of "girls" in the midst of the action, almost all of whom are reduced to whimpering sex objects at the sight of Diesel's muscular frame.

Indeed, one intelligence officer - fetishized here as a ditzy bespectacled assistant - cannot resist sharing her S&M safe word to Cage during their first meeting in the hope she'll get to whisper it again to him in private.

One early bedroom scene cuts abruptly to a rail cart tipping a full load of white granulated sugar.

Subtle.

An acrobatic assassin called Xiang (Donnie Yen) and his associates Serena (Deepika Padukone), Talon (Tony Jaa) and Hawk (Michael Bisping) steal technology codenamed Pandora's Box from a high-powered meeting of the National Security Agency led by Jane Marke (Toni Collette).

"They just took out the best of the best like it was a Sunday brunch!" growls Marke to her superiors.

They demand swift action to retrieve the top-secret device, which controls every military satellite in the world.

The future of mankind hangs in the balance and the NSA needs a thrill-seeking daredevil to infiltrate Xiang's inner circle and avert global disaster.

So Marke travels to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to recruit Xander Cage (Diesel) back into the fold.

Eventually, he answers the NSA's call to arms and recruits a posse of authority-flouting renegades, which includes sharp shooter Wolff (Ruby Rose), car crash addict The Torch (Rory McCann) and hedonist Nicks (Kris Wu).

Aided by NSA gadget expert Becky (Nina Dobrev), Cage and his crack squad prepare for battle.

xXx: Return Of Xander Cage punctuates a flimsy plot with death - and logic-defying acrobatics on land and sea, and director D.J. Caruso can't resist the chance to defy gravity too for a preposterous final showdown in the air.

Diesel struts through the melee with a satisfied swagger.

In one superfluous scene of softcore fantasy, his hunk discharges his lethal weapon several times to satisfy a harem of lust-crazed lovelies.

"The things I do for my country," he grins lasciviously to camera.

One of them is evidently suggesting that a woman's duty is to submit to a man, and preferably do it in thigh-length boots and figure-hugging shorts.

:: SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 5/10

SPLIT (15, 117 mins) Thriller. James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Haley Lu Richardson, Jessica Sula, Sebastian Arcelus, Brad William Henke, Neal Huff. Director: M Night Shyamalan.

Released: January 20 (UK & Ireland)

Three's company, 23's an intimidating crowd in writer-director M Night Shyamalan's intriguing thriller about a trio of teenagers who are abducted in broad daylight and held hostage by a thirty-something oddball exhibiting multiple-personality disorder.

The abductor's distinct personas supplant one another without warning, establishing a tense psychological battle for internal supremacy, which runs parallel to the hostages' life-or-death fight for survival.

As dramatic set-ups go, Split is ripe with suspense, and Shyamalan's script veers in unexpected directions, including one tantalizing sequence that will draw gasps from fans of his earlier work.

A flashback framing device to a childhood hunting trip is far more predictable and the twisted morality of closing scenes, which attempt to justify who deserves to die, leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth.

Far sweeter is Glasgow-born lead actor James McAvoy's tour-de-force portrayal of an emotionally damaged man at war with himself.

In one powerhouse scene, he ricochets between several personalities, capturing with aplomb the fierce battle raging inside his antagonist's head.

For her birthday celebration at a local restaurant, popular high school student Claire Benoit (Haley Lu Richardson) invites her classmates, including best friend Marcia (Jessica Sula) and creepy outcast, Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy).

On the way home, a socially awkward misfit called Kevin Crumb (McAvoy) overpowers Claire's father (Neal Huff) and kidnaps the three girls, spiriting them away to a bunker.

The teenagers woozily regain consciousness from chloroform fumes in a cell without windows or obvious means of escape, completely at the mercy of their captor.

"You know the only chance we have is if all three of us go crazy on this guy," whimpers Claire, panic rising.

Casey urges caution and the hostages discover that Kevin exhibits 23 distinct personalities including a germ-phobic brute called Barry, a clucky British mother hen called Patricia and a nine-year-old boy called Hedwig.

"[Barry] knows he's not allowed to touch you. He knows that," Patricia soothingly informs the trio after one heated encounter.

Away from the bunker, Kevin makes regular visits to psychiatrist Dr Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), who is well aware of her patient's condition.

Meanwhile in the cell, Casey recalls hunting expeditions in the woods with her father (Sebastian Arcelus) and uncle (Brad William Henke), which taught her how to incapacitate large animals.

Split is a return to confident form for Shymalan, who has never quite lived up to the dizzying promise of his Oscar-nominated third feature The Sixth Sense.

Admittedly his picture falls short of the suffocating tension of yesteryear's abduction thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, but it's an entertaining thrill ride, which gradually builds to the emergence of Kevin's 24th personality.

Aside from McAvoy's virtuoso turn, Taylor-Joy is haunting as a victim who might be stronger than she looks.

As in many of Shymalan's other features, appearances are intentionally deceptive.

:: SWEARING :: NO SEX :: VIOLENCE :: RATING: 6/10