Shottas

Shottas tells the story of Biggs & Wayne. Both poverty stricken Jamaican youths who want the "shotta" (jamaican for gangster) lifestyle. They begin by robbing a cola truck and move on from there. The story was actually good. As said in other comments, I also was ready for "another rapper" movie. Ky-mani Marley did a great job. Same goes for Spragga Benz. If you want to see a gritty, violent, & entertaining tale, watch Shottas.

This movie will probably be difficult to find, but it's worth it!

Cess Silvera does a good job directing. Everything looks very cool and stylish. He also captures the action scenes very well, they are not overly bloody either. Well done to him on the writing too. It is an original story. There aren't many movies (actually I don't know of any) that show the life of a shotta/gangster on the streets of Jamaica. Also the Jamaican drug dealers in Miami. I hope to see more from Cess Silvera!

Quite good soundtrack. All the songs suit the scene their placed in.

Some people thought that the acting wasn't good. I thought it was fine. Each actor plays their character very well. The stand outs were Ky-Mani Marley and Paul Campbell.

Overall I thought it was a cool and enjoyable movie. A good gangster film. As I said before, it maybe difficult to find, but it's worth it!

I read that the movie is very bad. I don't agree. Some scenes are filmed like soap-opera but in general the movie avoids all the clichés from the Hollywood films. I recently saw Miami Vice from Michael Mann and I hated it. For Hollywood there are only good guys and bad guys. Just that, nothing in between. Instead in Shottas shows you exactly how gangsters are created. Created by imitation. Dreaming of a nice life that will never come. Music score is very good and Marley is good even he is not a real pro-actor. Some of the gangsters look like if they were taken from the real shanty-towns of Kingston. That is good. Shows authenticity.

A bit uneven, Shottas suffers from low quality transfers that just add to the film's problems. My dvd copy would sometimes cut to a black screen that would say: Insert more robbery scenes here. Technical problems aside: the meaningful dialogue is quite slim- character development seems aimed at an increase in robberies, the direction is lop-sided and meandering, never really wanting to show you much more than hot chicks and nice whips(would have made for a nice extended music video). While I did like the music, it's over-used and just sort of "there"- didn't do much for the film other than elicit some head-nodding on my part. The Anderson character is a joke-he's a political-bad guy cut-out. And how about that "tongue-in-cheek" joke about Wyclef's character banking on a music career? Horrible. Did I care what happened at the end of the film to the main characters? Not really, they were bad people who did bad things, a sentiment I held regarding Cess Silvera's directing effort.

I was very entertained by this yaad-man's gangster flick. Spragga Benz is great in his first true role as a Jamaican drug dealer/gunman...Lots of familiar faces were seen in this from Wyclef to Lennox Lewis down to Tyson Beckford(Biker Boyz)... Haven't seen it on DVD but I will be sure to buy when it shows up