Reggae has slowly morphed into a genre with a bad reputation in America among certain too cool for skool kinds of people. It has become associated with Bob Marley almost exclusively, and with college frat boys who blindly appropriate his imagery for the sake of weed and partying. This in turn makes it uncool, as far as I can tell, for a segment of the population more into image than music. Reggae's older sister ska gets a similar treatment because of the third wave ska and ska-punk trends of the 90s, and holy Jesus fuck, the dismissiveness makes me want to chew someone's ears off.If Rockers could accomplish anything great in this world, were it suddenly beamed into the brains of everyone ever, it might be to erase these misperceptions about the genre. This film is not frat boy appropriation, but gritty and patoised and silly and soulful, much like the music it represents. It's a sprawling, three-quarters-fictional, messy film that revels in its references and documentarian roots while also indulging in crime fantasies and rebel mythologizing. It's chock full of people I've been listening to for years in small doses, and it has some great performances from them in the mix.
