Memories of an involuntary bloodbath that they caused in a Gujjar village haunts the dacoits, defining their subsequent acts of both desperation and redemption.
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His men are deeply conflicted individuals who have rebelled against a society that has cast them aside - they repeatedly talk about their sorry plight and, in their softer moments, allow themselves to dream of normalcy after they have surrendered and served their prison terms - and inevitably have to grapple with the moral dilemmas that attend violence and its aftermath. In one scene, an arms smuggler offers them better weapons - Rs 35,000 for one and Rs 60,000 for two, remember that the period is the mid-1970s - but the chief of the dreaded gang of Thakurs is too strapped for cash to go for the deal. They survive on frugal meals and their weapons are at best merely functional. The outlaws that this film is about aren't glamorised fugitives riding around on sturdy stallions like knights in shining armour. Sonchiriya Movie Review: Sushant Singh Rajput, Manoj Bajpayee and others in a film still (Image courtesy: Instagram)īajpayee's is a class act yet again, Rana smoulders with intent, Shorey is fire and brimstone, Rajput exudes anguish and determination in equal measure and Pednekar claims her space in the male-dominated cast and forbidding setting with a measured turn that evokes life-affirming, ennobling compassion. It is an astoundingly unblemished ensemble show. The actors at Chaubey's disposal - the known ones (Manoj Bajpayee, Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar, Ashutosh Rana, Ranvir Shorey) and the not-so-known ones (Jatin Sarna, Harish Khanna, Sanjay Shrivastava, seasoned theatre actors all) - 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 draws the themes of crime and retribution, caste and gender, despair and redemption into the near-mythic, overarching sweep of the narrative. The film completely upends the conventions of the genre. Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Bhumi Pednekar, Manoj Bajpayee, Ashutosh Ranaĭirector and co-writer Abhishek Chaubey, working with a superb screenplay by Sudip Sharma and aided by first-rate camerawork (Anuj Rakesh Dhawan), editing (Meghna Sen), sound design and background score (Bendict Taylor and Naren Chandavarkar), crafts a disturbing, unvarnished cinematic portrait of violence and its repercussions in Sonchiriya, an immersive dacoit drama set in the harsh, dusty ravines of Chambal in the 1970s.