Sonchiriya

“The one time a dacoit throws back his head to laugh is nothing like Gabbar Singh of Sholay; the laughter here comes from devastation and heartbreak… throwing his head back to confront the futility of his life and struggle… The film poses the question early on, one character asking in as many words: “If the dharma of the policeman is to catch the rebel, what is the dharma of the rebel?””

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“Cinematically well crafted. It handles violence beautifully, if such a word is appropriate to such an odious activity. The shoot-outs, of which there are many in the movie, have a kind of lyricism associated with them. The guns are all old fashioned, but the nice mix of slow-motion footage and panoramic pull back shots, keep you watching. Also, the way the film connects external events to certain split second and instinctive decisions of the ‘Baagis’ – thereby allowing them to escape from fully armed police contingents – has a surreal touch about it.”

Rating: 3 stars | Full review

“The actors… merge themselves so seamlessly with the milieu of this shot-on-actual-locations saga that they do not seem to be performing for the camera but actually living and breathing the parts. It is an astoundingly unblemished ensemble show.”

Rating: 3.5 stars | Full review

“An elegy in the mould of Sam Peckinpah’s films to an era of men bound by a code of honour and working beyond the confines of conventional law.”

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“Brings up universal themes, asking questions about remorse, honour and, the movie’s fundamental fixation, dharma. “

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“Sonchiriya is an entire mood within a movie. One that is bleak and inaccessible—and not always because the language spoken is thick Bundelkhandi—until you see the craft in it.”

Rating: 4 stars | Full review

“Dreary, poetic and desperately sad, it is about unwritten codes of honour among society’s outliers,  about the cruelty of caste and patriarchy, and about the endlessness of violence once unleashed.”

Rating: 4 stars | Full review

“Explores the frayed mentality of the outsider through a cinematic sub-genre that is best positioned to expose the innards of a time-torn nation. For a land whose reverence for history disguises its disdain of the past, there is a lesson in how its countryside consistently breeds underdogs that challenge the repercussions of no future.”

Rating: 4 stars | Full review