Posse (1993) Reviews

• Some good, some bad, and mostly ugly..

  merklekranz2007-03-06

  This movie has some great character actors, Isaac Hayes, Woody Strode, Pam Grier, Paul Bartel, and unfortunately they are mostly wasted. The development of the main characters is too rushed, and the story races on at a breakneck pace. "Posse' borrowed liberally from the "spaghetti westerns" ( revenge flashbacks as in "For a Few Dollars More", gattling gun as in "A Fistful of Dollars", coming of the railroad as in "Once Upon a Time in the West") The movie tries to accomplish too much too quickly, and makes one wish that the deliberate pace of the "spaghetti westerns" had also been "borrowed". I rate it a 5.0, very average, and a missed opportunity. - MERK

• Not the best - but it's a start.....

  XavierLA1999-03-14

  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.

• Good idea badly executed

  mfrost71w2001-07-07

  An awful film; badly written, badly acted, cliched, hackneyed, dross. The premise is such a good one and a chance to educate about black cowboys but the film is truly dire. It is a curious mix of a bad 1950's Randolph Scott B movie and a bad 1970's spaghetti western. The villains are cardboard, the flashbacks laughable, the dialogue excruciating. The deliberate anachronisms (such as 'Victorian' rap singers and modern swear words like "motherf****er"), are irritating to the extreme. A Frankenstein monster that died on the lab table.

• Finally, a western with originality!!

  Vice-51999-12-28

  "Posse" is a great movie!! It's basically something nobody has tried before: telling the tales of the first great black cowboys. Mario Van Peebles wears both hats as he works as both an actor and director for this film, about a black infantrymen named Jessie Lee leading his fellow troopers into battling white supremacists and his former commanding officer (played with slimy exception by Billy Zane). "Posse" has everything a good western should have: great gun-fights, cool performances (especially by Van Peebles, Stephen Baldwin, and Big Daddy Kane) and a triumphant ending.

• surreal unconventional Afro-American western

  camel-91999-09-21

  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.