It’s Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman who are listed first, yet Sunny Pawar, as the boy Saroo, truly captures your attention whenever he's on screen. He's being raised in India’s countryside alongside his older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate), and their mother (Khushi Solanki), struggling to make ends meet. The two boys decide to go into the city hoping to earn some money. However, when they get there, Saroo is too exhausted to join his brother as he looks for work, so he falls asleep! He then wakes up on a train that’s sealed and traveling through the countryside, and upon disembarking, no one recognizes his hometown or understands him. This marks the beginning of some experiences that show how unsafe this world can be, as Saroo meets some unkind people during his journey. While these dangers aren't shown in an explicit way, it doesn’t take much to imagine what some might have planned for this five-year-old boy. Luckily, things turn around and he is taken to Australia where he becomes Dev Patel's character. He seems content there, moves to Melbourne, and meets Lucy (Rooney Mara), but begins to feel increasingly uneasy. Despite having a good life and caring about his adoptive parents, he still misses his family in India – so he starts trying to piece together what he knows, remembers, and can find using Google Maps. Will he ever be able to locate home? Patel also feels very natural in the role, and manages to portray well the conflict between his desire to uncover what happened with his family and his responsibilities to his adoptive parents; this is a difficult situation made more complicated by Sue’s personal struggles, which are explored without resorting to excessive drama. The movie's final portion also includes flashbacks that seem to be motivating his wish to return but also allow us to see how loving his original family was, even though they had to steal small items from trains to trade for milk. Kidman is only present for a limited time, yet delivers an emotional and often touching performance – although neither she nor Patel quite reach the impact of young Pawar who really makes this film worth seeing.

Source on TMDB