Metacritic reviews

It's all pretty rough going, but 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.

Gangster tale Shottas feels like a Jamaican "Scarface," offering a vivid slice of the underground street culture of Kingston. Still, the violence is senseless and the plot full of holes.

Writer-director Cess Silvera claims he's trying to "show the gritty life of Jamaican immigrants," but Shottas is no more a social-issue film than "Scarface."

It doesn't help that the level of acting in the film brings nothing but accidental humor to the mix.

There's no social commentary discernible here; merely a rap-video style glorification of the gangsta life, complete with mad money, barely clad babes and that annoying affectation of holding pistols sideways. As to its treatment of women, well, it's not exactly a feminist film.

Cess Silvera, the film's writer and director, doesn't find any of the humanity or inner demons that would allow the characters to rise above B-movie exploitation.

A slick but dull new shoot- ' em-up from Jamaica, doesn't penetrate the mysteries of high-rolling, high-risk thug life.

Despite the syncopated score and subtitled patois, this is just another "Scarface" knockoff, with the usual array of bling, booty, and ballistics.

Shottas exists purely in the realm of rasta-music-video fakery.