Critic Reviews

• John Anderson, Newsday

  It's tough to imagine how someone could make a movie about Jamaican gangsterism that's so devoid of political content, but that's hardly Silvestra's biggest problem.

• Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

  Shottas has everything a bad music video should have -- close-ups of foreign sports cars, women with painful-looking implants stepping in and out of hot tubs, ugly men with gold teeth waving around automatics.

• Neil Genzlinger, New York Times

  Stars from reggae and other musical worlds give acting a try in Shottas, a witless, misogynistic, gratuitously violent, drug-culture-worshiping film.

• Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter

  Writer-director Cess Silvera delivers an empty, bullet-riddled exploitation combo of attitude and poses.

• Evelyn McDonnell, Miami Herald

  Unless you love senseless violence and gratuitous shots of fake breasts, you might want to listen with your eyes closed.

• Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

  Who says they don't write good women's roles anymore? The females on view fall into two prototypes: Hot Tub Chippie No. 2 or Plastic Surgery Fire Sale Victim No. 3.

• Jason Gorber, Film Scouts

  A straight-ahead Jamaican gansta flick, it's a lot of fun, if empty.

• Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide

  Even with its microbudget there's enough blood, booty and bling to satisfy fans of the genre. It's also never dull, thanks to Silvera's restless pacing and a great reggae soundtrack.

• Jim Hemphill, Reel.com

  De Palma and Scorsese breathed new life into the crime genre; Silvera just embalms it.

• John P. McCarthy, Boxoffice Magazine

  Crime flicks featuring nihilistic thugs engaged in futile, sometimes humorously soulless violence accompanied by a hip soundtrack aren't a commodity. And nothing in this energetic, hollow movie boosts its marketability or appeal.

• Brent Simon, IGN Movies

  Shottas, a Jamaican-set underworld flick executive produced by musician Wyclef Jean and being given a pat-on-the-head theatrical release in advance of its DVD peddling from Sony Pictures later this year, is proof that a movie can at least on some l

• Laura Kelly, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  It would have been a more worthy effort to get past the lifestyle sheen to the emotional undercurrents of men who choose violence at every turn.

• Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly

  Shottas, based on a true story, has been sitting on shelves for a few years now, accruing mythology as a great film that's been unjustly sidelined. That, it is not. [It's] wretched.

• Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

  Stephen Marley's vociferous reggae-rap soundtrack makes painfully literal the film's The Harder They Come-Get Rich or Die Tryin' hybridization.

Read all 14 critic reviews