Richie Mehta

Newcomer Sneha Kumari is fiery and magnetic as teenage Robin Hood-style outlaw Phoolan Devi in Phoolan, a biographical drama focusing on forty-eight hours where the future Indian politician and two colleagues struggled to evade capture during the siege of a tiny village. Inspired by Devi’s 1996 autobiography, Phoolan fills in the early years of India’s “Bandit Queen,” who in the film takes on a leadership role in an armed gang that initially kidnaps her. Having learned to shoot, she attacks rapists and brutal landowners, returning deeds for property to the lower castes, who cheer her for her mercy. The film opens as seventeen-year-old Devi hides her hair under a turban, scurrying with two colleagues away from police trying to flush them out of hiding. She’s wanted for killing at least twenty men, and thousands trying to capture her are told her gang is agile, like dragonflies. She’s seven feet tall. She’ll castrate you before killing you. (That much, at least, is true.) Phoolan is an effective contained thriller that serves as an intriguing introduction to a fascinating woman.