Buck and the Preacher | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Name: Buck and the Preacher
Released: 1972-4-19
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Cameron Mitchell, Denny Miller

Buck and the Preacher

PG
1h 43m
1972

84%

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Widely regarded at the time of its release as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with a social conscience, Buck and the Preacher is an immensely satisfying Western which marked Sidney Poitier's directorial debut, as well as his first screen pairing with superstar Harry Belafonte. Poitier stars as Buck, an ex-Union Army Cavalry sergeant who becomes a scout for freed slaves heading to the Colorado frontier. Tagging along with him are his wife (Ruby Dee in a scene-stealing performance) and a Bible-thumping con artist known as the Preacher (Belafonte). Attacked by racist bounty hunters determined to return the former slaves to a life of sharecropping in Louisiana, Buck and his followers must summon all the courage they have in order to reach their destination and help settle the Wild West.

Director:

Sidney Poitier

Cast:

Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Cameron Mitchell, Denny Miller, Nita Talbot, John Kelly

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

TOMATOMETER®

84%

Critics Consensus: Sidney Poitier's directorial debut may be more steady than inspired, but Harry Belafonte's live-wire performance and a Black perspective on classic Western tropes make for a refreshing addition to the genre.

Reviews

Spectrum Culture

David Harris

Buck and the Preacher exists at an interesting point in Poitier’s career. It’s a revisionist western that could have never been made in the ‘60s. But it doesn’t go as far as some of its contemporaries, especially the blaxploitation films of the era.

Poitier films himself magnificently as an elegant western vision, whether gliding smoothly by on horseback or stalking desert towns in a natty pink shirt. But the scene stealer is Harry Belafonte...

A terrifically enjoyable western adventure bromance, packed with brio and breezy, unreflective energy and tilted to the lighter end of the tonal spectrum.

It’s part-Western, part-comedy with a twist of Black Power in a still-divided nation in which African-Americans were seen as the heroes in a genre that never gave a socially conscious idea of civil rights before.

goes against the grain, rewriting one of Hollywood’s most storied genres—the Western—through the lens of neglected black history

September 14, 2022

FULL REVIEW