Third World Cop

[Drunk Monk]

This was Jamaica's biggest box office hit. Now I've enjoyed the vintage JA cinema, like Harder They Come, Countryman, and Rockers, so I was really looking forward to this. It was filmed on video, which added to it's cheesiness, but I'm ok with cheese, as you know. It had a pretty thumping dancehall soundtrack, and captured Trenchtown and the patois well (sometimes subtitles were required). The leads were captivating, charismatic in a dancehall way. The downside was that the story was stupid. A cop returns to his old hood and has to bust his childhood friends for gun running. That's it. No twists. Not much tension. It openned with a sex scene to gunfight that made no sense at all. There was some inkling of character development, but it never goes anywhere. The villain had a metal claw hand. There was some odd visual jokes, like the villain auditioning pole dancers and the last one being this grossly obese woman. Mediocre gun fights.

Overall, it was a great disappointment.