| This film would reflect poorly on Jamaican cinema, but it was mostly filmed in the United States so West Indians can sleep easy knowing it's not their fault. This is a remarkably bad movie in concept and execution from all aspects save the soundtrack. The film follows the story of Julius (Mark Danvers) an aspiring musician and mass murderer. Emigrating to the United States as a mule for a Suge Knightesque fellow, he immediately is frustrated by an employer who demands that he actually work in order to receive remuneration. Faced with so tyrannical a demand, he is torn with the dilemma of returning to his rude ways or sticking it out legit to save money for studio time. The devil on one shoulder snuffs the angel on the other. The poor acting having started from the get go, the film then begins wandering aimlessly from drug deal to drug deal and shooting to shooting all the while trying to pawn off on the audience bad acting and poor character development. Luckily, the technical aspects of the film are terrible as well so as to make for almost perfect symmetry across the quality board. Only Beenie Man's competence as an actor keeps the film from achieving anti-perfection, well, that and a halfway decent soundtrack. As the film drags on one realizes that journeyman writers Bentley Kyle and Trenton Gumbs refuse to take advantage of many opportunities to make the film stop. Instead, they continue on piling superfluity at every chance to a film already much too long at the first natural conclusion point. The script lacks throughout in every way imaginable. The audience should heed the warning from Ninja Man's first appearance that further viewing will be a testing ordeal. He's a legendary freestyler but a terrible actor. There are perhaps two or three funny lines in the film but the real joke is on me as I didn't turn it off thinking it might get better. |