Jamaica's first feature film certainly left its successor with something to live up to even though, by more advanced standards, it's pretty raw film-making that lacks focus at times. Where the film does score is in giving the viewer an insight into a side of life that is hardly ever glimpsed the crime-ridden slums of the impoverished island's cities and the tyrannical power of music producers over the country's music industry.
Jimmy Cliff plays Ivan Martin, a country boy fleeced of his belongings within hours of arriving in the city to advise his mother of the death of her sister. Martin has dreams of becoming a reggae star, but can't find anyone to record his song and quickly finds himself depending on a local preacher who treats him harshly. This treatment gets worse when the preacher discovers Ivan is carrying on an affair with a girl he has possibly been grooming for himself. Ironically, thanks to the Machiavellian deceit of a big-shot record producer, Ivan finds himself sucked into a life of crime just as his music finally begins to take off.
This film plays like a Warner gangster film transplanted to the Caribbean and infused with copious amounts of ganja. This being the 70s, it isn't Cagney or Bogart that Ivan models himself on but Franco Nero's incarnation of seminal spaghetti western anti-hero, Django. Probably the cutest moment of the film comes during its climax as director Perry Henzell intersperses shots of Ivan's come-uppance with the earlier shots of the cinema audience laughing and cheering at the carnage unleashed by Django and his gatling. The difference is, Ivan's guns are empty, and he is almost entirely bereft of principles or redeeming features. Somewhere during the course of the film he turns from victim to victimiser and yet Henzell expects the audience to retain its sympathy for him as he embarks on a cop-killing spree as bloodthirsty as it is pointless. Unfortunately, he and co-writer Trevor D. Rhone aren't skilled enough to pull it off.
The soundtrack, as others have noted, is superlative, even though the tunes are not always played at optimum moments (what's Many Rivers to Cross doing there at some relatively insignificant moment to which it bears no relevance?). Gritty seems to be the word most other viewers choose to describe this flick, and it certainly has echoes of the meanest of the early 70s blaxploitation films. Had its production values and locale been more appropriate it may even have become the same kind of talismanic film that De Palma's Scarface became to urban gangster of the 90s.
Jimmy Cliff plays Ivan Martin, a country boy fleeced of his belongings within hours of arriving in the city to advise his mother of the death of her sister. Martin has dreams of becoming a reggae star, but can't find anyone to record his song and quickly finds himself depending on a local preacher who treats him harshly. This treatment gets worse when the preacher discovers Ivan is carrying on an affair with a girl he has possibly been grooming for himself. Ironically, thanks to the Machiavellian deceit of a big-shot record producer, Ivan finds himself sucked into a life of crime just as his music finally begins to take off.
This film plays like a Warner gangster film transplanted to the Caribbean and infused with copious amounts of ganja. This being the 70s, it isn't Cagney or Bogart that Ivan models himself on but Franco Nero's incarnation of seminal spaghetti western anti-hero, Django. Probably the cutest moment of the film comes during its climax as director Perry Henzell intersperses shots of Ivan's come-uppance with the earlier shots of the cinema audience laughing and cheering at the carnage unleashed by Django and his gatling. The difference is, Ivan's guns are empty, and he is almost entirely bereft of principles or redeeming features. Somewhere during the course of the film he turns from victim to victimiser and yet Henzell expects the audience to retain its sympathy for him as he embarks on a cop-killing spree as bloodthirsty as it is pointless. Unfortunately, he and co-writer Trevor D. Rhone aren't skilled enough to pull it off.
The soundtrack, as others have noted, is superlative, even though the tunes are not always played at optimum moments (what's Many Rivers to Cross doing there at some relatively insignificant moment to which it bears no relevance?). Gritty seems to be the word most other viewers choose to describe this flick, and it certainly has echoes of the meanest of the early 70s blaxploitation films. Had its production values and locale been more appropriate it may even have become the same kind of talismanic film that De Palma's Scarface became to urban gangster of the 90s.