Posse (1975)

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

kirk douglas being a rather intelligent man, I was still a little surprised the way this movie turned out. I didn't think he had that much OOMPH in him or whatever. The good guy is the bad guy and the bad guy is the good guy - that's always a good start. But then the good/bad guy gets too greedy and forgets about paying his men decently and then they leave him. If it was only like that in reality! Things have become too complicated today with too big societies and the crooks just too stupid and coward. they don't steal from the rich anymore - they steal from the poor and when they don't get caught they get to be presidents or whatever. Where is the modern day Robin Hood? Nowhere or maybe the media just refuse to write about him - who knows? Anyway, great finish on a film that, without this glorious OOMPH, would have been mediocre. Kirk belonged to the old school of decency and he shows it here. By the way, it's he, who plays the bad guy, in case you would miss it.

This should have been a much better western than it is. Bruce Dern turns in another great performance as a nasty bad guy, Jack Strawhorn, being pursued by Marshall Howard Nightingale, who plans to use his capture as a route to political office. It features good actors as Nightingale's posse and has some terrific gun play, a burning train and attractive if underused women.The big problem for me was Kirk Douglas. Ever a interesting actor, Douglas fails to make Nightinggale so corrupt or devious that I really pulled for Strawhorn. Instead, he comes off more as a very competent lawman doing his job in bringing in a train robber, who just HAPPENS to want to go for political office rather than a dishonest man and incompetent lawman who will do anything to get higher office. If Douglas' character would be more bad as its root, the film would have worked much better. Instead, he comes off as merely ambitious. Too bad. There's a lot to be recommended in this western and the twist ending is quite good. I just wish it had been set up better with Douglas' character.

One thing about Kirk Douglas is that he's never been afraid to let the public see him as a bad guy. It's a great tribute to his ability as an actor to develop such a wide range of characters from the heroic Spartacus to the villainous George Brougham in The List of Adrian Messenger.Posse falls somewhere in the middle of those two films in terms of the good versus evil scale for Kirk Douglas. Politicians running on "law and order" platforms were just coming into vogue at the time and this western is spot on about those kind of politicians and the motivations behind them.Kirk Douglas is a U.S. Marshal with political ambitions to be a United States Senator. He's got his photographer with him to record his exploits and travels on a private railroad car provided by the railroad. He's on the trail of outlaw Jack Strawhorn, played by Bruce Dern. Before capturing Strawhorn, Douglas and his posse burn alive Dern's gang in a barn fire and then butcher another group of misfits he's put together even as they want to surrender.What I like most about Posse is that it doesn't try to make Dern out any kind of a hero. He's an outlaw the way some people are grocers, bakers, shoemakers, etc. This may very well have been Bruce Dern's best screen role.It turns out that Dern is a far better judge of human nature than the fatuous Douglas is. The town of Tesota, Texas where most of the action takes place is very much sadder and wiser when the film concludes.A lot of the same themes are covered in the more acclaimed The Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood who also starred and directed himself. But I think Kirk Douglas got there first.

Well, not 'the best', perhaps, but an interesting and stylish western starring Kirk Douglas, who also produced and directed it. Bruce Dern is great as Strawhorn, the bad guy who ends up stealing the show. Howard Nightingale is running for a seat in the US Senate. He is a man of great complexity, and one trait very much to the fore in his personality is a ruthless desire to impress the voters. He has assembled a posse of rangers, his own personal uniformed army of crimebusters. Nightingale (played by Douglas) has calculated that he can win the election on a clear-the-territory-of-lowlifes ticket. He and his posse are hunting down Strawhorn, and have fitted out a crusade train for the purpose of capturing their prey. The plan is to grab Strawhorn and hang him just in time for the election. Nightingale is in the pocket of the railroad owners. The local newspaper is the Tesota Sentinel, and one of the film's themes is the valuable role played by the press in speaking truth to those in power. One-armed, one-legged journalist Harold Hellman (played by James Stacy, who had recently lost both limbs on a motor cycle accident) is the equal of the photogenic wannabe Senator. Nightingale works the crowd with glib words, but his position is being eroded by a different formula of words - that used by The Sentinel. One of the film's elegant touches is the photography motif. At various points in the story, the participants pose to have their picture taken, and the resulting stills form a freeze-frame chronicle of the action. A lot of post-production work went into dubbing extraneous voices onto the soundtrack, so that the crowd scenes are laced with apposite little remarks. A violently-burning train provides terrific visuals, as well as offering acerbic comment on Nightingale's political aspirations. The film's concluding message, that by its nature a standing army is a threat to democracy, is well made - as is the point about the fickleness of public opinion. Verdict - A clever, enjoyable little western.