Asoo Billa became a sizeable box office smash in the first half of 2001 running to packed houses all over the country in the pre-Osama lull before the storm. It is difficult to imagine why this particular film scored a bull’s eye while so many others that appear to be identical in theme and execution and actors failed.

The film is your typical run of the mill revenge mayhem potboiler where we watch the mild mannered, law abiding, peace loving, god fearing Asoo (Shaan) confronted by a series of terrible circumstances which ultimately force him to take up a violent crusade of his own against the perpetrators of evil and injustice. This theme is basically a blue print for 90% of all Lollywood Punjabi movies and it seems to be nothing short of a miracle that the audiences lap this sort of thing up time after time after time. This film features Shaan in the title role and for half the movie we watch him in subdued mode as the mild mannered innocent blue eyed boy who lives only for the joys of saying his prayers and serving his goody-two-shoes parents. Asoo has a mate Ghiasia who has just been released from jail where he did time for murdering the men who looked at his sister with a “dirty eye”. Now Ghiasia (Baber Ali resembling Pran in Don with his brown curly wig) is back in the pind and life is blissful until one fateful day everything goes horribly wrong. Asoo’s father who works in a local godown finds that “poe-durr” (heroin) is being smuggled from the godown and he being the upright, virtuous (idiotic) type decides that he absolutely must blow his own trumpet and go to the police to blow the whistle on the nefarious drug smuggling operation going on under his own very nose at the behest of his own employers.

Asoo’s dad however meets a terrible fate as the head of police turns out to be a party to the drug smuggling ring and instead of rewarding the poor man for his civic sense and courage, thrashes him to a pulp. Then the old man is fraudulently charged with the theft of Rs. 2 lac, publicly humiliated and disgraced and thrown into a prison cell. Meanwhile a shell shocked Asoo arrives at the police station where he is told that unless he manages to get hold of the money that his father has been accused of stealing…matters would get out of hand. When poor Asoo fails to turn up with the money on time the corrupt officer turns up at his home and humiliates Asoo’s mother and hits her and worse causes the dupatta to fall of her head. This indignity for Asoo is the last straw and as he arrives at the Police station in a fury it is only to find his dad being pummeled into a meatball. This for young Asoo is too much to take and all of a sudden the mild mannered Asoo is transformed into a drooling, axe-wielding maniac who proceeds to bludgeon to death what seems like the entire local police force.

The next day in court Asoo pleads guilty to murder and is sentenced to death so vehemently by the judge that he snubs his nib while writing the word death…….deep, meaningful symbolism Lollywood style! Now the blood bath begins as his friend Ghiasia whisks Asoo away from jail in a deadly grenade attack. Asoo takes refuge with Sana the golden-hearted prostitute who shows up habitually to launch into a frenetically energetic dance complete with serious pelvic thrusting and torso twisting. Asoo Billa becomes the local Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to provide for the destitute and now it remains to be seen if he can complete his mission of destroying all his enemies before he is himself struck down and it doesn’t take a genius to guess exactly what does transpire.

The usual blood bath showdown with fat bellied men with tits running around in ridiculous wigs and outfits gunning each other down in comical style and various virtuous people leaping in the way of bullets and saving other equally virtuous folk. The best dramatics are saved effectively till the very end (a reason for the films humungous success maybe?) when the power of religion has the final say. As Asoo is obliterating all his rivals in the final rampage to glory he is about to blow off the head of a scumbag policeman when the muezzin starts his call to prayer and all of a sudden Asoo is unable to pull the trigger. At this point the rest of the police open fire and a volley of bullets are pumped into a sagging Asoo’s body. Then a sagely, pious and earnest police chief arrives and calls an immediate cease fire admonishing his men for firing while the prayer is ongoing and he praises the criminal Asoo for having the decency for respecting the sanctity of the prayer by halting his own killing spree! Asoo staggers forth and slumps in a “sajda” (bowing) in front of the mosque while the muezzin wails away.

Not a dry eye in the house then as director Hasnain clearly manages to strike a chord with the masses with his melodramatic climax scene. There is another terrific memorable moment when in police custody, a wild eyed Almas Bai (Sana) violently strangles a slimy snitch before (the polices's) startled eyes using her shackles as an instrument of death - these Jatti’s are certainly made of stern stuff! The heavy handed drama plus the fact that the film is moves along at a rapid pace despite the utterly predictable nature of the plot helped the film to attain widespread popularity. The other important ingredient in the films success are the highly seductive, typically vulgar gyrations of the two leading ladies Sana and Nargis both of who contort, twist, thrust and twitch their body parts tantalizingly, much to the delight of the hungry masses. Both girls are more than adept at milking the vulgar dance for all its worth and Nargis especially employs wonderfully sleazy facial expressions which send the vulgarity factor of her dances into stratosphere. No wonder she was packing them in during her infamous live theater act that was so sadly cut short by the wretched moral majority types that our society is blighted with.

The film is totally formulaic and offers nothing new or fresh and is exactly what one expects from a typical Punjabi masala potboiler – perhaps this in itself is exactly the reason why the film clicked big time – its predictability.