Shottas (2002)

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Boring

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Like "The Harder they Come" and "Scarface" (both of which it echoes,) this movie is about young men growing up hard on the mean streets of Jamaica, using violence to rise to the top of the drug world. The Jamaican locale is presented as a gritty, urban jungle where young children play at being "shottas," Jamaican lingo for gangsters. In fact, the very first scene shows the major characters as children playing cops and robbers, only here the robbers are the good guys. When one of them puts his toy gun to the head of his playmate and goes bang, he yells out "I killed the snitch." That theme of gun violence pervades the whole movie before it's over and you get to see some wild action as well as some gruesome murders.The film stars Kymani Marley, the son of the legendary Bob Marley. The senior Marley is regarded as a god on his island and clearly Kymani is following the same path to superstardom. With smoldering good looks, neat dreads and a soulful demeanor, Kymani Marley takes the lead early on. While the old man was spending time in the studio, it appears his boy Kymani was spending time in the gym. The young gangster has a smooth, muscular body, broad shoulders and narrow waist, which the movie showcases in action scenes and in the bedroom. His posse consists of the equally physical Spragga Benz and some rough and tumble Jamaican street muscle.Physically, Kymani has this role nailed, but you have to wonder how the son of one of the world's most spiritual entertainers – a guy who preached peace – would feel about his son playing the part of a ruthless thug that deals out death as casually as cigarettes. Kymani is a total badass and his crew does whatever he tells them. In one riveting scene, they invade the home of a burly Jamaican dealer. They strip him to his boxers, discover his stash and then tell him they will let him go. So smooth is Kymani that you actually believe it - until you see the knife slowly drawn across the big man's throat.The moral ambiguity is only underlined when a police raid (the Jamaican cops look like gang members – some in uniform – some shirtless,) indifferently fires tech 9s into a crowd of party goers. After slaying a white politician who betrayed them, they flee to Miami. Interestingly enough, the politician is the only white death that occurs in this movie. All the other violence is brother-to-brother – something else the movie seems to be asking us to ponder. There's a shootout at a disco, shootouts on motorbikes, execution of a rival kingpin (a gun forced into his mouth) and all along the way, sex with some beautiful women. Much is made of the allure of the shotta and Marley plays the role, strutting bare-chested or wearing a wife beater, but always with a pistol jammed in his sagging waistband. Of course the gun is part of the attraction and, when one admirer begins to run her hands over his ripped body, she actually purrs when she touches it.The second half of the movie, spent in Miami, gets a little repetitive. More turf wars, more executions, and more hot tubs with topless models. There's enough bloodshed at the end of it to satisfy Shakespeare and the fates of the shottas are resolved – some better than others. Throughout it all is Kymani Marley. Already a big star and reigning sex symbol in Jamaica, one imagines his smoking sexuality, fighting skills and action creds will get him a crossover role --- he's earned it. His father may have been a Man of Peace, but his kid is a stone killah, mon.

wow what can i say about this movie.IT IS A MUST SEE MOVIE.i came across this rare movie about six years ago.the story line is quite good a lot better than i expected.the acting was good and it has a great sound track.the only thing is the Jamaican accent is really heavy,you have to listen very carefully or you won't enjoy this movie.it pays to watch it more than once to get how powerful this movie really is.the thing i liked about this movie was the feeling of how real it felt.its only a low budget movie so its not a well known Hollywood blockbuster.directed by cess silvera it follows the lives of two young male characters growing up in the ghettos of kingston jamaica.they decide to go to America and the story unfolds from there.over all i gave this movie 8 out of 10,DON'T MISS IT IF YOU CAN GET IT MAN.

Freshman writer & director Cess Silvera's "Shottas" is a shallow, cynical, but competently lensed, R-rated, blood-splattered Jamaican gangster saga in the tradition of William Wellman's "The Public Enemy" (1931) as well as Brian DePalma's "Scarface" (1983) with noisy gunfights and vile profanity galore. This account of two penniless kids that grow up in the West Indies to become murderous criminals with lots of reggae music sweetening the mix resembles a music video. Indeed, Silvera directs "Shottas" as if it were a music video with liberal use of jump cuts, aerial visuals, slow-motion, varying shutter speeds, and amped up music. Authentic locales in both Jamaica and Miami enhances to the film's sense of realism. Young Turks that groove on the gangster gunfights; promiscuous, half-clad babes sporting fake and/or genuine boobs, and cool cars will relish this good looking movie. Women are objectified throughout the gritty action as dispensable sex objects. Several die, shot down like dogs, next to their man in or on whatever mode of transportation that they had at the time. Our protagonists, Biggs and Wayne are barefoot and broke as youngsters in Kingston in 1978. One day they spot a delivery man with a fat wad of bills in his fist. They quiz him about his earnings. They learn that he has lots of loot, but he doesn't pack a pistol to protect himself. Wayne (Carlton Grant, Jr.) borrows a .38 snub-nosed revolver without permission from a marihuana dealer who conceals it in an old sneaker in a woodpile. The next day Wayne and Biggs (J.R. Silvera) shoot and rob the delivery man. Biggs and Wayne take the loot and get visas to go to America. Actually, Biggs is from America, but his mother sent him to live in Jamaica since he behaved like such a bad boy. Twenty years later, when we see Biggs (Bob Marley's son, Ky-Mani Marley of "Haven") again, U.S. authorities in Miami are deporting him back to Jamaica. Biggs' childhood pal Wayne (Spragga Benz) and his right-hand, insane, trigger-happy gunman Mad Max (Paul Campbell of "Third World Cop") meet him at the airport. Wayne explains that they are doing alright for themselves in the extortion racket. Indeed, they take him with them to a car dealership and ice the owner because he is three months behind on his payments. Later, Wayne's brother dies at the hands of a cop, and Wayne and Biggs declare war on a local politician, Anderson, who wants to ship them back to America. Some scenes prove informative. For example, if you're a gangster, you should never enter a toilet alone because you're vulnerable to anyone's bullets while you stand at a urinal with your back turned to God and everybody. Silvera stages his shoot-outs effectively enough in slow-motion like a Sam Peckinpah or John Woo might have done. One good example is a street gunfight between the police in their cars and gangsters on their bikes. Even the babes get in on the bloodshed and blast away at each other with their hardware."Shottas" brims with violence best described as random and casual. Basically, this movie is about hoods blasting away at other hoods and holding their automatic pistols sideways as an homage to Hollywood legend Glenn Ford who liked to hold his revolver sideways in his western movies. The film opens with our protagonists getting into a shoot-out when rival gangsters invade their house in a surprise attack and blow them full of holes, including one of their shop until you drop girlfriends. The film goes into flashback mode and then brings things back up to speed. Silvera shows himself accomplished enough at altering the chronology of the story for maximum dramatic impact because he shifts "Shottas" back and forth through time. Biggs and Wayne obtain new visas to get back to Miami where Biggs wields his gun to reclaim his lost criminal kingdom. Wayne and Biggs shake down the local drug lords for a piece of their action. One hilarious but sick scene has trigger-happy Mad Max smoking a cigarette until we notice that the hand holding the cigarette is part of a severed arm that he disposed of in a dumpster. As our protagonists warn the Miami drug dealers, "Playtime is over."Incidentally, the title "Shottas" means 'gangstas' and/or 'shot-callers.' There is nothing new about this action thriller except the novelty of its Caribbean island locale. Happily, there are subtitles for white folks like me that don't understand the Jamaican patois. The favorite word 'bloodclot' is the equivalent of f#@k. Silvera provides two commentary tracks to the Sony Pictures DVD release of "Shottas" and both tracks furnish loads of information about the movie. Interestingly, Silvera learned during filming that if he got angry with a cast member, the upset cast member gave a better performance. Silvera also discussed some of the shortfalls in the budget, like the Jacuzzi scene where the water level changes because the tub was leaking. The final shoot-out at Wayne's house has earned Silvera some criticism. The point is that surely Wayne and Biggs would have installed some form of surveillance system to protect themselves against such likelihood. Silvera says on the commentary track that the dudes just slipped up as humans often do. Actually, our protagonists pay for their lack of vigilance much in the same way that the truck delivery man did in the beginning with his lack of a firearm to protect himself. All-in-all, "Shottas" is worth watching once. Although the skin-deep characters never change and the action is predictable, this well-paced shoot'em up surpasses a lot of loose cannon indie gangster thrillers. Mind you, the message here amounts to nothing more obvious than: shoot first and fast and trust nobody. Idiots that want to imitate Biggs and Wayne should remember that most of these characters live by the gun and die by the gun.

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.