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.

Firstly, it was fairly entertaining and had very good camera work although will look slightly outdated now. But it followed the same 3 chords the whole film. Dialogue a bit forced at times and some "actors" seemed to be anything but. It's fine for ok watch but won't be remembered as anything special.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

Biggs (Kymani Marley) and Wayne (Spragga Benz) grew up together on the mean streets of Kingston, Jamaica, and build up a huge drug dealing network that extends from their home town to the streets of Washington and Miami. But as the stakes rise and the games turn deadly, their rise to the top could be followed by a spectacular fall.

Having West Indian work colleagues, the particular lingo they use grows on you after a while and you can pick up some of this particular mangling of the English language. But the 'patois' featured heavily in Shottas would appear to be so heavy that subtitles are required through out, even if you do try to get rid of them on the menu screen. Their particular phrases, descriptions and certainly insults will certainly make an impression on you and so, even if this tale of young upstarts rising through the criminal underworld isn't particularly original or inspired, it's distinctive and amusing enough for this reason alone. Bob Marley's son Kymani Marley has presence in the lead role, and there's other musical talent in the cast including Wyclef Jean in a supporting role. ***

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 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.