Part of Restoration Roundup
With his rousingly entertaining directorial debut, Sidney Poitier, alongside actor-producer Harry Belafonte, helped rewrite the history of the Western — bringing Black heroes to a genre in which they had always been sorely underrepresented. Combining boisterous buddy comedy with blistering, Black Power–era political fury, Poitier and a marvelously mischievous Belafonte star as a tough and taciturn wagon master and an unscrupulous, pistol-packing “preacher” — who join forces in order to take on the white bounty hunters threatening a westward-bound caravan of people recently emancipated from slavery. A superbly crafted revisionist landmark, BUCK AND THE PREACHER subverts Hollywood conventions at every turn and reclaims the Western genre in the name of Black liberation.
Restored in 4k in March 2022 by Sony Pictures Entertainment using the original negative, in collaboration with Cineric, Inc. (4k scanning and digital image restoration), Roundabout Entertainment (color grading), and Deluxe Audio Services (audio restoration).
“Sidney Poitier and the triumphant reclamation of the lost iconography. The Black cowboy rare in the medium; spectacle by definition.” —Jordan Peele “Poitier and Belafonte's combustible chemistry is palpable, and when Ruby Dee returns from the edges of the story to stand dramatically alongside them — she plays the wife of Poitier's character — the film elevates to a higher level.” —Peter Martin, Screen Anarchy
