Posse

Mario Van Peebles directed as well as starred in this ham-fisted, 1993 Western with a predominantly African American cast. The story finds a posse of black shooters (with one white member, played by Stephen Baldwin) taking on a racist sheriff and military man, but Van Peebles's effort at mixing convention with hip credentials gets pretty grating. (Tone Loc makes the worst cowboy in film history.) The film is also incredibly sexist, going well beyond the usual frontier-floozy clich?s and lapsing into the sort of blatant exploitation one found at that time in rap-music videos. There are lots of cameo appearances from familiar folks willing to support Van Peebles on a project that probably sounded like a mix of experiment and event--Pam Grier, Isaac Hayes, Woody Strode, and the director's father, Melvin Van Peebles. But even they can't help. --Tom Keogh

Mario Van Peebles (Judgment Day), Billy Zane (Titanic) and Stephen Baldwin (Fled) shake up the frontier in this "fast-paced, star-studded, big brawny western" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times)! Filled with gun-blazing, fist-pounding action and co-starring Big Daddy Kane, Blair Underwood, Tone Loc, Pam Grier, Isaac Hayes, Nipsey Russell, Aaron Neville and more, Posse takes a page missing from the history books ?- and unfolds it with suspense, humor and awe-inspiring power! In 1892, a group of mostly black infantrymen, betrayed by their white commander, Colonel Graham (Zane), desert the Spanish-American War. With Graham hot on their trail, Jessie Lee (Van Peebles) leads the men to his hometown, Freemanville, only to find it's also besieged by war ?- a racist war! Lee's attempts to bring justice and freedom to his people make for a brilliant western that's short on words and long on "killer entertainment" (Los Angeles Times)!