Outlaw Posse

In ‘Outlaw Posse’ it looks as if the writer and director Mario Van Peebles took a list of some of the most interesting Westerns in the world and tried to make a script from it. In this Western, there is any number of parts that are found in other films that can safely be regarded as classics, such as ‘The Wild Bunch’, ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’, ‘Blazing Saddles’, ‘Django Unchained’, and, for good measure, all those Billy Jack films in which Fred Williamson appeared during the 1970s not one of which seems to ring a bell. Van Peebles can appreciate a good western, but apparently he hasn’t created a good western because this work will hardly go down in history as a classic and indeed there is nothing intriguing about it.

However, the opening scene here is really memorable, to the point of deserving its own short film, and it creates expectations that the rest of the Outlaw Posse film is unable to meet. In it, a bunch of older guys (Neal McDonough, Cam Gigandet, the inevitable M. Emmet Walsh) come into some squalid little ghost town in New Mexico in about 1908, go to the bar and have a drink. While sitting at a bar, an Indian patron is starting to be physically threatened by one of them until out of the periphery comes Chief (Van Peebles) who embarks on making the loudmouth very quiet first with words then with non verbal moves. This is a very funny scene and works as a tribute to the greats of the genre while advancing views that pregnant women in such pictures could seldom see or hear.

We learn first that he and Angel (William Mapother) in the years immediately after the Civil War were transporting a consignment of Southern gold, purportedly for reparation payments to former slaves, which was being shipped west. As is unavoidable, the two had a dispute that ended with Chief taking the gold, and if you ever come across Anger “: hand, you can make sure it is safe and bury it on land that “White America” is most reluctant to step onto,” and he made sure to tell the tribal leader he would be “back in a while.” Now is that “while,” and Chief has a small crew that includes aged Carson (John Carroll Lynch), unnamed gang member Southpaw (Jake Manley), Queenie (Amber Reign Smith), and Spooky (D.C. Young Fly), who justifies his career saying, “Make people laugh, and you can say anything and get away with it.”

Of course, Chief is not the only one who needs the gold. That explains why Angel and his crew are at the address of Decker (Mandela Van Peebles), who happens to be Chief’s son.

Even if Decker has not set eyes on or heard from his father for years, Angel has the audacity to demand from him to reunite with his father and enlist himself in the gang. Thus, allowing Angel and his people to capture them, and take away the gold along with the Chief’s hand. When Decker refuses, Angel sets his house on fire and abducts his wife, Malindy (Madison Calley) to make sure he will comply. In search of the gold, Chief and the rest of the crew have a fair number of whimsical encounters, and he and Decker cautiously start to forge many broken bridges. Many bridges, inevitably—Spoiler Alert—a bridge from the gold and—Spoiler Alert—lasting pillars.

In terms of westerns it is true to say that “Outlaw Posse” does not mark Van Peebles’s first rodeo as he also starred and directed the 1993 film ‘Posse’ whose connection to this film of a similar name is mostly superficial. More importantly however that film was in essence a history lesson which saw Van Peebles almost single minded in his efforts to impress his audience that yes there were black cowboys so back in the day-sounds like a good idea until one realizes that he was so keen to impress them of this that he virtually forgot to tell them a fascinating story.

This time around however, historical lessons come in more subtle forms but he still hasn’t really created anything along the lines of a gripping narrative. Such is the level of acquaintance with the material that the strongest apparent wisdom only with respect to this conception. To be more specific the conception is that those people who are crying about their race or religion or gender or class need to quite worrying about who is the biggest victim and unite against their oppressors is the very idea that made “Blazing saddles” much more than just a gag fest.

It could be that in order to mask a story that is uninteresting, Van Peebles has his characters articulate more modern sentiments hoping to replace the old stereotypes of the genre, but are only rarely interesting or Keren. More worrisome, however, is the fact that he uses a hyperactive visual style throughout, including a roving camera and rapid cutting, that only serve to distract.

Nonetheless, the film may not coalesce into a satisfying unity for me, but it is suitably engaging, and I appreciated a number of sections throughout the film. I have, for instance, already praised the brilliance of the film’s opening sequence but there are other nearly as good ones such as when Chief’s crew launches into a bank heist designed to pull off two other similar thefts which I will let you find out and in which they create a more pastoral version of Bartertown where an old associate of Chief’s played by Cedric the Entertainer manages.

I mention these distracting appearances of Whoopi Goldberg and Edward James Olmos but most of the core actors do well in the film – I particularly enjoyed Lynch as the wise but battered Carson and Smith as the unpredictable Queenie. I also found Van Peebles, now in front of the camera, appealing in line with Williamson’s son, and who could incorporate a world that is no longer reality for most modern actors.

In the end, “Outlaw Posse” is let down, however, it has enough moments of interest to allow you to forget this from time to time. It does not reach the high standard of quality established by the films it attempts to replicate or even to more recent takes on Westerns like ‘Dead for a dollar’ which is stunning and equally unfortunate, directed by Walter Hill. However, there is no surplus of western movies in the current status of the multiplexes so if you have this fetish for westerns and do not want to wait till the summer for the release of the first two films of Kevin Costner series ‘Horizon’, you might be pleased with some of it.

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