Phoolan (2026) Movie Drinking Game
Take a Drink: whenever Phoolan is not about to put up with some bullshit
Take a Drink: whenever someone is shitty to a Mallaah person
Take a Drink: when the good cop acts like the only good cop
Take a Drink: for friendly fire or threats thereof
Do a Shot: helicopter grenade!
Do a Shot: snake removal service
By: Henry J. Fromage (Two Beers) –
Phoolan Devi, bandit turned congresswoman and eventually martyr for democracy, lived one hell of a life in her 37 years.
Phoolan tells just one story from her harrowing yet inspirational life- the time when she and a handful of the rebels she led were completed surrounded and massively outnumbered by police forces in a rural village, yet escaped nonetheless.
A Toast
From the jump, when we meet her as just a teen girl, true discovery Sneha Kumari’s Phoolan is spirited, unafraid of anything, and absolutely fed up with the treatment she and her family (who are Mallaah, one of the “backwards castes”) receive from their fellow villagers. Phoolan has extremely good reasons to be as angry at the world as she is- much more dire ones than we at first see.
It’s shocking, then, when we leap ahead and find her leading a band “noble rebels”. Deemed bandits by some, they rob from the rich who mistreat their workers, and try to teach her in turn to balance vengeance and mercy (although for my money they don’t offer as good of arguments as she has for the former over the latter in this case). Thanks to the temporal crosscutting, this storyline builds as the film progresses, and when we finally get to see her at her full power, dispensing justice to a group of rapist landlords… goddamn.
The regional government and the police they employ are hellbent on capturing, or even better, killing her, and they’ve finally cornered her somewhere inside a small rural village thanks to a betrayal in her ranks. Everything the police do is shudderingly corrupt or incredibly incompetent. Not once, but multiple times officers immediately try to cover up friendly fire casualties, and suffice it to say, anyone captured has a short life expectancy. There’s precisely one cop with a conscience, which may come into play later.
Director Richie Mehta delivers a very well shot film with crackling action scenes and an excellent sense of scale. He’s made an epic film fitting to Devi’s epic story.
Beer Two
The rebels’ morality when Phoolan first joins is all over the place- we only kill rapists, but also this guy, but not your rapist cousin! He’s family! Let him live, he’s asking for forgiveness (and is also offering money).
More generally, some things here are painted in rather broad strokes, but that’s something Bollywood is used to doing well.
Verdict
Phoolan tells a key story in the life of Phoolan Devi, to some a bandit, to others a rebel, and to many downtrodden a hero.
