‘Outlaw Posse’ Review: Mario Van Peebles’ Uneven but Diverting Mix of Blaxploitation and Spaghetti Western Tropes
variety.comJoe Leydon Film Critic If Sergio Leone had ever signed on to make one of those ‘70s Blaxploitation oaters that once provided steady employment for Fred Williamson, it likely would have looked and sounded much like “Outlaw Posse,” a wildly uneven but cumulatively entertaining shoot-‘em-up that finds Mario Van Peebles doing triple duty as director, screenwriter and star.
Quadruple duty, actually, if you count his credit as an executive producer. “Outlaw Posse” has nothing to do with Van Peebles’ previous entry in this genre, 1993’s wild and woolly “Posse,” which suggests the multitasking filmmaker is tipping his Stetson to the multitude of ‘60s Spaghetti Westerns that, ahem, borrowed titles and eponymous characters from better known yet totally unrelated horse operas. (Think Django, Ringo, Sartana, etc.) But, then again, maybe not.
Indeed, the film will probably be enjoyed most by folks not given to undue consideration of such trifling matters as lineage, logic and arrant anachronisms.
It’s 1908, and Chief (Van Peebles) is introduced as he is lying low “somewhere near Mexico” decades after stealing, then hiding, a shipment of Confederate gold near the end of the Civil War.
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