Baali Jatti (2000)
Cast: Saima, Shaan, Moamar Rana, Sana, Izhar Qazi, Sabira Sultana
Director: Masood Butt
Synopsis: A film that follows a moribund formula. Dead on Arrival.
Reviewed by: Omar Khan

Pakistani commercial films are so prone to be stuck in a formula that nine times out of ten, you can tell the entire story of a movie just by its name, poster and cast. In the case of Baali Jatti, the film has barely been running for ten minutes, and it is obvious how the rest of the two hours plus will follow.

The film starts with two earnest cops on the hunt, near the Pakistani border, for a bunch of smugglers bringing their goods in from their cohorts. There is a violent shootout with the bandits snagged by the upright cops, who find that the smuggled goods consist of Indian Alcohol. The criminals are hauled into torture cells to have information about their suppliers gleaned from them.

After a good day’s work, the two main cops head home. The elder of the two explains how his family is his entire world and that he has an angelic sister to whom he is devoted.

The next shot is of Saima waking up and attending to all the chores that every virtuous young woman should ‘aspire’ to. She feeds the poultry, milks the cows, cleans, cooks and attends to all the household chores before waiting for her doting brother to return. All while singing a melodious song, of course.

From then on, a seasoned watcher can gauge what will transpire with precision. The family, including the cop, will be butchered by the evil smugglers, leaving the mild-mannered sister to take the law into her own hands and turn into an assassin, whose sole aim is to avenge the horrors her family have undergone. The Baali Jatti, warrior woman, will rise, and the younger cop, Moammar Rana, will fall for her romantically along the way, eventually leading to a moral dilemma of whether he should apprehend her for her vengeance wreaked upon the smugglers or to let her free. The only question remains whether she will die a martyr or be forgiven and indeed lauded by the law for bringing the evil smugglers to justice, even if it was in a vigilante style. Time to see how the film unfolds hereafter.

So, having laboured through two hours of the usual nonsense, the prediction was entirely correct. Throw in some saucy dances, family enmities and broken promises, Bahar Begum and a ton of comical fight scenes, and there you have it. A tried and tested formula as stale as mildewed cheese.

Once in a while, this kind of film clicks at the box office, and scriptwriters churn out a few dozen more, almost identical in tone, theme, storyline and even the cast of actors on display. Baali Jatti reeks of this monotony and has nothing novel to offer. All the actors go through the motions as they have done in dozens of films precisely like this one. It is a Punjabi film formula of the most predictable kind. Shaan is thrown into the mix as an arrogant, scowling young man with a massive grudge, and Sana begging for his attention like some love-sick, lusting, brain-dead village belle.

Saima’s brother, the earnest cop and the family, are soon butchered to oblivion, and she takes on the role of the Baali Jatti to avenge them. The film is one massive yawn that has been done to death and

Baali Jatti seen a hundred times before and probably will be seen dozens of times again with different titles.

Utterly predictable formula fare churned out by the brain-dead Lollywood film industry. This kind of film has been done to death, and even the most undiscerning punter would feel like they’ve seen it all before. It isn’t the worst film ever made in Lollywood, yet it takes its audience down a worn-out road far too familiar to provide novelty. There is a sense of massive Déjà vu – been there, watched that a dozen times before. Baali Jatti is indicative of the staleness setting in by the turn of the century, and where the industry began to flounder and wither away. The actors go through the same scenarios they have played in every second film. Baali Jatti symbolises the death of innovation that killed Punjabi cinema just a few years later. The film is a parody of the Punjabi film formula in Pakistan – Dead on Arrival. In a ridiculous climax, it’s a case of who will survive and what will be left of them. By then, the audience has been beaten into submission and rendered senseless.