Rockers DVD

Writer-director Theodoros Bafaloukos responded to Jamaica's siren call all the way over in Greece and came to the island to make this 1977 movie about a band of Rasta men/Robin Hoods getting their own back at the expense of those perennial bloodsuckers, the "uptown top rankings", as men of money and position are called in Jamaica. The reggae star-studded cast is undoubtedly the movie's most rewarding feature, though some fans have objected to the demeaning sight of the incomparable late singer Jacob Miller threatening a friend with a knife over a purloined chicken... leg or the equally great singer Gregory Isaacs exacting chump change for unlocking a tourist's rental car. However, these and other great reggae figures are also seen here in full and glorious performance at their peak. In fact, this film provides our only extended visual record of Miller's kinetic performance style and one of the best pieces of footage on Isaacs. Although Rockers doesn't approach the multi-layered complexity of The Harder They Come and it does betray a little superiority now and then to its characters, there are plenty of laughs as well as insights into life at the time for Jamaica's growing Rastafarian movement. Drummer Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace makes an unlikely though quintessentially Jamaican leading man as he moves between wooing the rich man's virginal daughter and making pit stops at the shack he shares with his wife and children. His band of accomplices is priceless, and the scene in which each struts in his own "stylee" to Peter Tosh's "Stepping Razor" is alone worth the price. --Elena Oumano [show more]

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