Buck And The Preacher (1972) ***1/2

Sidney Poitier's directorial debut, Buck And The Preacher (1972), is a Western buddy film in the vein of Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969), only with a better score (by Benny Carter) and Black liberation at the forefront of its story. The picture challenged the notions that Hollywood had always portrayed in regard to the absence or minimization of Black people in the Western. Poitier and Harry Belafonte have a wonderful chemistry—the former delivering both stoicism and charisma and the latter much scraggly comic amusement. BATP does a nice job of providing antiheroes that you want to root for, constructing an entertaining yarn about displacement and Exodusters, and displaying both the solidarity and tension between African Americans and Native Americans in the late 19th century. A very cool film that sits somewhere between the Blaxploitation and Italian Western genres—it makes a point without getting too serious or overwrought, maintaining a sense of fun throughout.