Posse

It's mad and bad. It's angrier than a dozen rap artists, and more politically correct than Sinead O'Connor.

It's Posse, the new Hip Hop Western directed by and starring Mario Van Peebles. It's also screwier than last year's election, though it does move a lot faster, and may prove to be more controversial.

But beneath its radical militancy, Posse mainly consists of grunge fashions and cool postures.

There are two ways to describe Posse:
1. It's a post-modernist deconstruction of the ruling-class ideological text of the tradi­tional Western, and a demystification of its oppressive racial legacy.
2. The script is a crazy quilt stitched together from about 40 other movies. A
large chunk of Posse is a mix of parts of The Magnificent Seven, Nevada Smith, Once Upon a Time in the West and Heaven's Gate.

Added to this stew are elements from some of the underground classics of the 1970s, including a wardrobe from El Topo, and a radical chic attitude inherited from Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. The director of the latter was Melvin Van Peebles, Mario's father, which provides a sense of tradition (though little else).

Melvin is also in the cast, along with a large list of other oddly prominent figures who have almost no reason for being there. Isaac Hayes and Big Daddy Kane hang around just long enough to get blasted, while Pam Grier and Paul Bartel look as if they accidentally wandered in from another movie.

Posse has more cameos than the "We Are the World" video.

Not surprisingly, Posse is screamingly incoherent. It has high energy and lots of great visuals, but it just doesn't make sense. Van Peebles wants an over-the-top, mythic Western, but he mostly ends up with missed opportunities. He wants to celebrate the black cowboy, but ends up creating an allegorical apology for youth gangs.

The white man's West is repeatedly pre­sented as racist, decadent and crazy. When we arrive at the black Utopia of Freemanville, it has fallen into a state of apathy, decadence and decrepitude. In a West this rotten, it is amazing that the Posse gang doesn't just shoot everyone (actually, they almost do).

In his previous film, New Jack City, Mario Van Peebles came across as a strong and witty action film director. With Posse, however, he wields a heavy hand that lacks warmth or humor.

Even worse, his political pose smacks more of pop glitter than of heart-felt conviction. As the movie's hero, Van Peebles is out to avenge his peoples' degra­dation by redneck loonies, but he looks too much like he just sauntered off of Rodeo Drive to be believable.

Where's Jim Brown when you need him?