Van Peebles

I'm a little late and it's already started and I'm thinking: Hey, they've really upgraded. Glorious photography of the Scottish hills. A huge cast representing the medieval armies of England and Scotland, sheathed in acres of clanking chain mail and carrying enough assault swords to start a revolution, or stop one. goodness, they've even replaced squirrelly little Christopher Lambert with . . . Mel Gibson?Hmmmm. How come I didn't read about this in Premiere?Of course, I'd bumbled into a preview of the beautiful-looking "Braveheart," Gibson's summer film about the English conquest of Scotland.

Posse(PolyGram, $94.99, rated R) 1993Black actors have appeared in many Westerns and sometimes had sizable roles, such as Danny Glover in "Silverado" and Roscoe Lee Brown in the John Wayne movie, "The Cowboys."But in "Posse," most of the cast is black, as is the director, Mario Van Peebles. Van Peebles also stars as legendary gunfighter Jessie Lee. When the film begins, set against the backdrop of the Civil War, Lee is under the charge of a ruthless U.S. colonel who has tricked Lee and his gang into becoming outlaws for the colonel's personal gain.

"Well, I finally got to see that new movie, 'Posse'," said my friend, Will B. Humble, the other day.Humble and I were cooling out after work at our favorite tavern, the Old Briarpatch. It was Happy Hour, don't you know, and the peanuts were free."Oh yeah," I said, "the new Mario Van Peebles flick about black cowboys. What'd you think?""It was OK, I guess," said Humble thoughtfully. "I just wish it was the kind of movie I could take my nephews to see.""Too violent?""Nah, no more than any other western."

C Mario Van Peebles didn't just want to make a western. He wanted to make every western.And in "Posse," he gets about 90 percent of them.The movie is insanely ambitious, completely captivating and maybe only six plot twists too incoherent. It has style to burn; too bad it didn't burn a few pages of script somewhere in the process.The curiosity is that Van Peebles, son of legendary Melvin Van Peebles of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," is much more interesting as a director than as an actor.

Washington--He'd just directed and starred in a huge hit for Warner Bros. called "New Jack City." His phone was ringing, well-wishers were everywhere. As an actor and as a director, he commanded the highest respect. Most important, he knew he was hot because "when they talked to me, they put 'baby' on the end of my name."As in Mario, baby, you can do anything you want . . . as long as it has the word "Jack" in the title: "New Jack City 2" "Shaft Goes to New Jack City" or "Boyz in New Jack City."

IT'S BEEN a great 40 years. If I had to do it all over again, I'd do it exactly as I have.Being movie and stage critic for The Evening Sun for 28 of those years (for more than 14 of those same years, I also did television criticism) has been a career dream come true.No regrets. No sad songs. I was a star worshiper and remain one. It has been my privilege to interview some of the biggies during all those years, among them Joan Crawford, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Meryl Streep, William Holden, Sylvester Stallone, Gregory Peck, Robert Taylor, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, Paul Newman and James Mason (who said my face should be on a stamp, whatever that means)

Before there was Spike Lee, before John Singleton, before Mario Van Peebles and Charles Lane, there were Gordon Parks and Michael Schultz. Both Parks and Schultz were directing films back in the early '70s, back when there was very little made of the fact that both men were black.With Lee, Singleton, Van Peebles and others getting all this attention, how does Schultz feel about it?''Well,'' he said, ''I'm a bit troubled by this emphasis on the young, the 'new breed,' but it's all part of the pattern, the minimization of black history,'' he said.

Orson Welles once lamented that the only thing a writer needed was a pen and an artist an easel -- but the film director needed an army.Getting an army has historically been the rub of the movie business; but hard as that is, imagine how much harder it would be if you were a young black male living in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn. You're 17 years old. Where do you get your army?Or imagine that you're 22 and you're from South Central L.A., the stalking ground of the Bloods and the Crips, and you seethe to make a film that tells the truth about your growing up. Armies don't grow on trees, not even palms.

DON'T believe the negative publicity surrounding "New Jack City."Go see it for yourself.When I saw it, people didn't erupt in violence, nor did they rush out to buy drugs.Instead, like any other good film, "New Jack City" entertains, informs and makes the audience think.It's a realistic movie about the world of a Harlem drug lord named Nino Brown (played magnificently by Wesley Snipes) and his cohorts.Brown is a ruthless, egotistical, greedy man who sucks the life out of his community. But in the end, the victimized community turns against Brown, who is arrested and unsuccessfully prosecuted.

Ahem. For all those sniping at Mario Van Peebles over ''NewJack City,'' a bit of history is relevant. For those busy ignoring, or worse, putting down Robert Townsend for ''sloppiness'' in assembling ''The Five Heartbeats,'' this is for you.Oscar Michaux, whose career we celebrate in February, had to )) pay out of his pocket and personally distribute his now-admired features, driving across country when there were no interstate highways and no good motels for blacks. When he died, no one replaced him, and after desegregation of downtown movies, blacks deserted the venues which gave him room to grow.