From the Vaults: Jamaican Homegrown

Reggae Fest is over and you've already checked out the Marley biopic and read all our coverage (film review and interview with the director), but you're still craving another dose of Jamaican homegrown. If this describes you, then allow us to suggest a couple more film titles to you: Third World Cop and Dancehall Queen.

The number of indigenous Jamaican films (as compared with Hollywood productions such as How Stella Got Her Groove Back, The Mighty Quinn, and Cocktail that use Jamaica as a setting but do not originate in that island country) is about as plentiful as members of the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team.

2000's Third World Cop is a fairly standard cops-vs.-criminals story about a Kingston lawman who uncovers a gunrunning racket. The film was shot on digital video, which was a relative novelty 12 years ago. Produced by Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records and Palm Pictures, the features original music by Sly & Robbie and cuts by many other local artists. Third World Cop opened in Austin in an exclusive midnight run in the summer of 2000, and as marginal as that might seem, the exhibition gods were more favorable to Third World Cop than the 1995 Jamaican hit Dancehall Queen, which never had a local theatrical run but one of the most financially successful Jamaican films of all time.