When the Jamaican reggae star Peter Tosh was slain by three gunmen at his home in September 1987, there were rumors of a conspiracy to silence the singer and songwriter, whose music cried out against colonialism and racial injustice. Tosh, who was 42, had been hoping to buy a Kingston radio station in order to broadcast Rastafarian reggae music full time. Some speculated that his enemies, alarmed at the prospect, had him assassinated.
The murder, which was officially ruled to be robbery related, is re-enacted near the end of "Stepping Razor-Red X," Nicholas Campbell's flashy but confusing biography of the singer. In pseudo-cinema verite style, the camera lurches wildly up the stairs of his house to the room where Tosh and his common-law wife, Marlene Brown, were having dinner with friends. Screams and gunfire erupt.
Although "Stepping Razor-Red" gives conspiracy theorists their say, the movie, which opened this week at Film Forum 1, offers no hard evidence in support of a political plot. It is an adulatory portrait constructed around excerpts from Tosh's tape-recorded diaries, discovered in 1990, which he called the Red X Tapes. The name refers to the ominous red X that Tosh often found next to the signature line on documents he was required to sign.
Reminiscing on tape about his life and times, Tosh reflected gravely on everything from his strict Christian upbringing to the spiritually enlightening powers of marijuana, or ganja, as he called it. Along with his mystical idealism, Tosh also harbored a streak of paranoia. There is talk of the Devil and of vampires.
The film that Mr. Campbell has spun around these tape-recorded thoughts is a loosely knit montage of interviews, fragments of recordings, excerpts from concert and television performances, and re-enactments of scenes from Tosh's life. In evoking his childhood, the film maker unfortunately resorts too often to slick, advertising images like that of a child running on the beach, silhouetted against the sun.
More impressionistic than historical, the film follows a rough chronology, from Tosh's days as a choirboy to his career as a professional musician, first as a member of Bob Marley's group, the Wailers, and later as a solo star. The film's most painful scenes are shots of Trenchtown, the squalid Kingston slum in which Tosh was born and whose residents live in jammed-together shacks made from cardboard and scrap metal. Against these scenes, Tosh speaks movingly of Jamaica's poor blacks, who suffer their plight, he says, with "the dignity of a millionaire."
The movie's funniest scene is an excerpt from a "Saturday Night Live" appearance, in which Tosh is joined by Mick Jagger, who ungraciously hogs the spotlight with a ludicrous flapping and prancing routine.
As he matured, Tosh became increasingly militant, and his religious beliefs more African-oriented. He inveighed against the romantic bromides of pop-soul music and the shallowness of the "shake your booty" school of dance music. Visiting Africa, he was impressed by a medicine man whom he claimed to have seen imbibe a potion made of roots and transform into a tiger and then a serpent.
The story that "Stepping Razor-Red X" tells may be an absorbing one, but the film's narrative method is frustratingly vague. No dates are given, and no one interviewed is identified. There are many moments in which the Jamaican patois is so thickly accented that the words are unintelligible. Only those familiar with Jamaican politics and the history of reggae music will be able to grasp many of the film's references. Stepping Razor-Red X Written and directed by Nicholas Campbell; cinematographer and producer, Edgar Egger; edited by Trevor Ambrose; released by Northern Arts Entertainment. Film Forum 1, 209 West Houston, South Village. Running time: 103 minutes. This film has no rating.
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