ven when a movie is far from perfect, you can tell when a director has poured his soul into it. Dev Patel’s directorial debut —he’s also the movie’s star—is trying too hard, and for too much. It wants to be a political allegory, a somber study of a man haunted by childhood trauma, a clarion blast of inspiration for downtrodden humans seeking to summon strength, and last but hardly least, a brutally exhilarating action entertainment. It succeeds at some of those things, some of the time. But Patel’s conviction, both as a fledgling director and an
