OUTLAW POSSE - Mark Reviews Movies

Outlaw Posse, Quiver Distribution

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 29, 2024

Writer/director Mario Van Peebles takes little pieces of history and sprinkles them throughout Outlaw Posse. At the end, the filmmaker almost seems to admit that some of those matters of historical trivia might have made for a more interesting story than the fictional one we've watched.

Obviously, that's not Van Peebles' intention, or he would have made a movie about "Stagecoach" Mary Fields, the boxer Jack Johnson, or any other of the real-life figures whose stories are briefly highlighted before the end credits roll. Instead, he has made an old-fashioned Western about outlaws, given it a revisionist spin that they're the real heroes in a country where the law fails entire groups of people, and added a righteous layer of justice to their exploits. It's an intriguing concept, undone by the fact that it's burdened with a few too many ideas and too much plotting to really dig into them.

Van Peebles also plays the heroic figure at the story's center, a man who has been in hiding for more than a decade and not just because he's wanted dead or alive by the law. He's known only as Chief, and an opening scene has him confronting a trio of men who look and behave as if they've stepped out of our concept of a traditional Western. There's a lawman (played by Neal McDonough), an old-timer (played by M. Emmet Walsh), and a cocky young gunslinger (played by Cam Gigandet), who wants to make his fortune by buying up a border town near Mexico.

Forget them, though, because Chief makes quick work of them, either convincing the members of the trio to leave and stay out of his way or shooting the especially racist one who doesn't get the hint. It's best to mostly forget them, however, because Van Peebles' story is also about cutting through tradition and finding the rot within it. Here's a story that's about an adventure to find hidden gold in the hills, but the origin of that gold, as a last-ditch effort by some Confederates to keep the wealth they earned from the cruelty of slavery, points toward what Van Peebles tries to really make his story about beyond those familiar elements.

It works at times, especially when the filmmaker is blunt enough about those revisionist intentions to overcome the formula that makes up most of this plot. That involves Chief coming out of hiding to assemble a group to accompany him on his mission to retrieve the gold he hid 11 years prior. It also involves his son Decker (Mandela Van Peebles, who is, yes, the filmmaker's real-life son), a retired Army veteran who is accosted by a ruthless gang of criminals—who just happen to have the authority of the law behind them—led by Angel (William Mapother).

Angel and Chief discovered that gold all those years ago, but our man disagreed with his cohort's intentions for the spoils. Now, Angel is looking for the gold and to avenge the loss of riches, as well as his left hand to Chief's blade. He insists Decker join his father's posse and lead Angel to the gold, and to ensure the son does so, Angel takes Decker's wife (played by Scytorya Rhodes) hostage.

That's the short of it. The long of it is that Van Peebles' narrative sort of meanders to various scenarios, little of them having to do with the gold until the third act, of injustice, corruption, and, in a little commune where people of assorted backgrounds have found peace, some hope for what a changing United States in 1908 could look like. There's an intrinsically episodic nature to this story, as Chief and his gang—including long-time fellow outlaw Carson (John Carroll Lynch), a stage clown named Spooky (D.C. Young Fly), and a young beauty named Queenie (Amber Reign Smith) who knew Chief when she was a kid and is now desperate to marry him (That's the extent of her character, by the way)—enact their leader's secret plan and right wrongs along the way.

In these isolated situations, though, Van Peebles gets to make his bigger point clear, whether that be the gang exploiting the fame of a pair of other outlaws, surprising a couple of exclusionary land magnates with some democracy, or sabotaging the military's violent efforts toward a tribe of Native Americans who just want to be left alone on the little land that hasn't been stolen from them. It's a sly subversion of the legend of the Old West, with a touch of modern-thinking satire, as well as a bit of justified anger, but ultimately optimistic in the same way Cedric the Entertainer's mayor of that commune is about people being people, having something to contribute, and needing to have the freedom to write their own stories.

It's really a shame, then, about this story, which finally feels like an extended detour before all of the stuff about the gold and a climax of routine—and confusingly staged—violence. The heart of Outlaw Posse is in what it has to say this country's history and the lengthy exclusion of certain groups of people from the telling of it. The formulaic material supporting it ensures that idea isn't allowed to speak for itself.

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