The beats of the cat and mouse chase between the police and the dacoits, and a rape revenge drama, are familiar. The rest of the film revolves around the journey of all the three characters to discover their dharma, and that hell of a ride involves rescuing an absconding woman Indumati (Bhumi Pednekar), a young rape survivor, and hiding from a police officer of another caste, Virender Singh Gujjar, who has a personal agenda to hunt them down. However, they believe they are dacoits by birth and must serve their dharma. Each of them is undergoing an existential crisis fuelled by the remorse of killing innocent lives in the past. is an unofficial spin-off of Bandit Queen since it takes a key character from that film, Man Singh (Manoj Bajpayee), and tells the story of his gang, comprising the likes of Vakil Singh ( Ranvir Shorey) and Lakhna (Sushant Singh Rajput). Sushant Singh Rajput in a still from Sonchiriya. Despite weaving the story around a long forgotten breed that is alien to the millennial audience, Chaubey puts forth a tight, immensely entertaining act, thanks to the exhilarating action and a crop of excellent actors.
But it is not as raw and hard-hitting as the Seema Biswas-starrer, a conscious move that turns out to be in its favour. The film often harks back to the story of Phoolan Devi in terms of its texture, style and aesthetic. Sonchiriya, Chaubey's recent dacoit drama, is a nod to Shekhar Kapur's 1996 (premiered at Cannes in 1994 but released theatrically in India in 1996) cult Bandit Queen. But then the camera shifts its focus to the flies hovering around a dead snake, and we know that Chaubey will debunk every myth we have been fed about dacoit dramas. Since we have grown up on the dramatic depiction of dacoits in Hindi cinema, the footsteps and the campy introductory music are sure to echo in our ears nonetheless. Abhishek Chaubey's dacoits walk the Gabbar gait, but without the crutch of background score.