La revanche de Jessie Lee

Ok, maybe Posse can't compare to other popular cowboy/western movies. But that's because it didn't have the FUNDING those movies had. Obviously, whenever you want to produce a story such as this one, focusing on African American historical involvement (and NO, servants and 'mammies' are not historical involvement), Hollywood isn't going to be too supportive. And believe me they weren't. The producers and actors sacrificed a lot of 'out of pocket' expenses to make "Posse", just so that the story could be told. I think that alone is commendable. Posse may not be Oscar material (and they don't like Black media too much either), but it is a start. It is entertaining, and it introduces us to the black cowboy, a character most of us are unfamiliar with.

The problem with Posse -- in addition to be too talky for a movie that seems to follow so many western tropes -- is that it wants to paint everything with a chintzy gloss that's way over the top. Now, I'm not a fan of the dirty, dusty, bland westerns that have been popular the past 25 years, either. I prefer the John Wayne variety and occasionally something like High Noon. But this movie tries to out-fantasy even those technicolor ones from the 50s and 60s that made the west seem like it wasn't just a bunch of scroungy, flea-bitten cast offs busy shooting each other in the street when not trying to brutalize People of Color.

So, what's good? Well, there's a fair amount of attention to detail, including the late 1800s Army uniforms at the beginning. Much of what we think about the cavalry in the 1860s and 70s really was a reflection of dress from decades later. The acting is reasonably good -- I say this not because anyone is bad but because the ADHD directing and script doesn't call for anything close to nuance or subtlety for scenes. This is one of those movies where you get a headache because all the characters move at a frenetic pace, like a room full of noisy, restless children all competing for attention from the adults.

There's a revenge story here -- we've seen it a million times before. The funny thing is something like The Outlaw Josey Wales does it and a bunch of people go crazy. This movie does it and they act like it is foreign territory. Of course, there may be obvious reasons.

The movie also tries to have a social conscience. The problem is that like everything else, it's over the top, to the degree that the dialogue often sounds more like a lesson than talk. I get that films like these have the double duty of trying to evoke in an audience understanding that some either pitifully lack or others are just far too aware of (to their suffering), but if everyone just trusted the story more, a lot of the dialogue wouldn't be necessary.

Anyway, as far as 1990s westerns go, this is no worse than, say, The Quick and the Dead. They look a lot like each other and were just as over the top. The funny thing, though, is the critics liked that one. Not so much this one. Golly, I wonder what's the difference?

When I heard about and saw the trailers for "Posse" I was eagerly waiting for the film's release. African-Americans made up fully a third of all cowboys in the Old West, but were virtually non-existent in Hollywood's Old West, except as train porters or mammies. The only real black cowboy seen by most Americans was Woody Strode, thanks to John Ford ("Sergeant Rutledge," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "How the West Was Won"), Richard Brooks ("The Professionals") and Italian filmmakers ("Once Upon a Time in the West," "The Revengers," "The Unholy Four").

"Posse," written, produced and directed by Mario Van Peebles, had promise. Unfortunately, it gets bogged down by cliches and a tired storyline. A rousing climax almost saves the film, though.

The movie begins with a stark history lesson about the true accomplishments of blacks in the Old West, as told to Reginald and Warren Hudlin by an old man (the legendary Woody Strode). He then segues into the fictitious story of Jesse Lee...

Lee (Mario Van Peebles) and his men are getting cut to pieces by the Spanish during the Spanish-American War while their commanding officer (a slimy, but effective Billy Zane) drinks Cognac miles away. Lee complains about the conditions and is arrested. Zane later promises to exonerate him and his men if they will pull off a mission for him -- namely to steal valuable documents from the Spanish. Stephen Baldwin is thrown in with Lee's gang because he's a troublemaker Zane wants to get rid of. The group pulls off the mission, but, instead of finding documents, they find gold bullion. They also find Zane and his cohorts waiting at the rendezvous point with guns to finish them off. Unfortunately for Zane, his men are like Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders -- long on bravado, short on skill. Lee's men, having been in combat, get the drop on Zane, kill most of his men and flee back to America as wanted men. (By the way, the method they use to get out of Cuba and back to America is original, but very creepy).

The middle part of the film is spent showing Lee and his men (rapper Tone Loc, Baldwin, a whiny aide and a few spares) heading to New Orleans, where they meet up with Big Daddy Kane. They also run into Zane, who has been tracking them. The whole tracking plotline is hard to believe (remember how long it took John Wayne to track down Natalie Wood in "The Searchers"?), but it makes for good shootouts.

Eventually, Lee and his men make it back to Lee's hometown, a black township full of freedmen. Such townships were numerous in the Old West, but survived only at the whim of white county officials (watch "Rosewood" for an example of what they often suffered from). The town is run by Richard Jordan as a greedy sheriff in cahoots with some crooked county officials. Throw in Zane and his own posse, along with a Gatling gun and you get the rousing climax.

Mario Van Peebles is not much of an actor, but he has enough range and skill to carry the burden of being Jesse Lee. Baldwin is not quite up to par with brothers Alec and Daniel, but he holds his own, especially when he meets his demise at the hands of fellow whites. I liked Big Daddy Kane's soft-spoken, but proud and defiant, role as Father Time and the way he kept looking at his pocket watch before doing anything. Tone Loc was a waste, though, since he kept rapping like it was 1998 instead of 1898.

The town basically had one purpose and that was to show off an impressive cast of black stars -- Melvin Van Peebles, Pam Grier, Reginald Vel Johnson and Nipsey Russell, among others. Of course, having a cameo meant biting the bullet (literally) in the finale.

By the way, another problem for "Posse" was its setting. Many contributions and accomplishments by African-Americans came during the years following the Civil War, from 1865-1890. Black soldiers became the vaunted Buffalo Soldiers who protected white settlers and tracked down Geronimo. Freed blacks moved west in droves as homesteaders and as cowboys on cattle drives because many white men had been killed or maimed during the war. Black townships sprang up in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Black lawmen like the legendary Bass Reeves were in abundance, especially in Oklahoma and Texas. By 1898, blacks were in a decline (despite their bravery in the Spanish-American War) that would not be reversed until World War I. Surely, Van Peebles could have drawn up a storyline set between 1865 and 1890.

"Posse" has a lot going for it. It's too bad Mario Van Peebles went for cliches, shootouts and tired storylines meant to sell tickets rather than tell a good story. "Unforgiven" and "Tombstone" showed you can do both.

With Posse I believe they had a great IDEA for a movie, but unfortunately great ideas is only where it starts. Poor acting, bad direction, and unbelievable characters all added to this flop. It seems the director was torn between screening a serious look at blacks in the wild west or a parody of a western. Either of which, he failed miserably at.

Visually stunning, extremely rich in detail, fast action sequences, innovative camera movements, and an historic interpretation of afro-americans settling in the west in the late 800's, this movie is highly unconventional. The more recent "Wild Wild West" has some similarities, "The Ballad of Cable Houge" comes to mind. Using comedy, fantasy, surrealism, the plot has a group of afro-americans traveling with a case of gold, chased by a posse. They join a settlement of afro-americans in the West, which while free by law, are reminded by the neighboring white towns that their liberty of action does not border out of their free town, and their law does not apply to white people. In a poignant scene, the only white man, who was in the original group of afro-americans with the case of gold, is brutally killed in public view by the white neighbors, almost to demonstrate that a white folk that joins the black folks has reached his lowest social status, lower that simply a black man, which by law cannot be killed without reason.