Mario Van Peebles directs a conspiratorial and fictionalized account of the rise and fall of the Black Panthers in America in the sixties. While the subject is powerful and potent, and could have made a great movie, it is rarely allowed to shine through as it is treated as an action movie. There are shoot outs and fight scenes, and the whole thing looks too slick to be what it should have been; a gritty historical drama.
