Bollywood Meets Classic Western in a Near-Mythic Dive Into Brutal Realities and Dilemmas You Have To See

Bollywood cowboy movies, or “Curry Westerns,” had their heyday from the 1960s until the 1980s. Round about the same time that Clint Eastwood was reviving the cowboy genre with Sergio Leone’s “Spaghetti Westerns,” Bollywood too, was having its own brand of cowboys and frontier justice with movies such as Sholay and Khote Sikkay. After a period when Westerns went out of fashion in Bollywood, the genre had a second wind with movies that borrowed heavily from the classic Western themes of frontier justice, honor, and revenge but were, at the same time, more grounded in local customs and tradition. One Bollywood movie that checks all the boxes in terms of a gritty and authentic Bollywood cowboy experience is Sonchiriya.