A thoroughly pretentious black spaghetti western, complete with old-timer Woody Strode topping and tailing the film. It has a swirling camera, filters to make the old west look golden, an embarrassing would-be erotic love scene, and a story that's deadly dull between the admittedly frequent bursts of violent and savage, but heavily stylised action. Jessie Lee (haltingly played by the director, Mario Van Peebles, who even ends the film on a close-up of his own face) escapes, gold-laden, from the Spanish-American war, with renegade colonel Billy Zane in hot pursuit. Jesse Lee aims to revenge himself on those who burned his preacher father, whose dream of black Fremantown has now been realised. But the town still lives under the shadow of the nearby Sheriff Bates (Richard Jordan). The whole thing does end in a good old-fashioned shootout, by which time the tale has taken two hours to unfold. As a document on the black experience in the West, it's undercut by the tiresome treatment. That story needs to be told in a less angry and more considered way.

©ipc tx. Film content from TVTimes