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.
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