Outlaw Posse
Watching “Outlaw Posse,” you get the sense that writer-director Mario Van Peebles was asked to create a list of his favorite Westerns and then adapted that list into a screenplay. Throughout the film, there are any number of homages (and even the occasional outright lift) to such favorites of the genre as “The Wild Bunch,” “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “Blazing Saddles,” “Django Unchained” and, of course, all those blaxploitation oaters that Fred “The Hammer” Williamson made in the Seventies, most of them sporting titles that you will have to look up for yourself. Van Peebles clearly knows a good Western when he sees it, but he hasn’t quite made one himself as his effort proves to be an occasionally intriguing but too often unwieldy work that is unlikely to make anyone’s list of classic Westerns anytime soon.
That said, the opening scene is some kind of instant classic, the kind that could have worked as its own short film and which makes promises that the subsequent proceedings cannot quite deliver. In it, a group of grizzled guys (Neal McDonough, Cam Gigandet, the inevitable M. Emmet Walsh) turn up in a dusty and desolate New Mexico town circa 1908 and proceed to the local saloon for a drink. While there, one of them begins harassing and threatening an Indian customer until from out of the corner emerges Chief (Van Peebles), who proceeds to decimate the loudmouth, first verbally and then with his guns. It is a hugely entertaining sequence that serves as a visual nod to the classics of the genre while espousing ideas that were rarely seen or heard in such films.
We soon learn that in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, he and Angel (William Mapother) were in charge of a shipment of Southern gold that was being sent out west, ostensibly to pay reparations to former slaves. Inevitably, the two had a falling out that resulted in Chief taking the gold—along with Angel’s hand—and burying it on tribal land that most whites feared to enter, making an arrangement with the tribal leader to return one day to safely retrieve it. The time is now at hand and Chief recruits a small gang, including the aging Carson (John Carroll Lynch), the young and callow Southpaw (Jake Manley), the sultry, knife-wielding mystic Queenie (Amber Reign Smith) and minstrel performer Spooky (D.C. Young Fly), who defends his work by observing “Make people laugh and you can get away with saying anything.”
Of course, Chief isn’t the only person who wants that gold, which leads to Angel and his gang arriving at the doorstep of Decker (Mandela Van Peebles), who just happens to be Chief’s estranged son. Although Decker hasn’t seen or heard from his father in years, Angel demands that he catch up with him and join his gang, thereby allowing Angel and his group to catch them and take both the gold and Chief’s hand for themselves. When Decker refuses, Angel burns his house down and kidnaps his beloved wife, Malindy (Madison Calley), to ensure his cooperation. While pursuing the gold, Chief and the others encounter any number of colorful characters and he and Decker tentatively begin to repair their relationship before the inevitable—Spoiler Alert—discovery of the treasure and—Spoiler Alert—eventual shootout.
