Antione Fuqua’s reworking of the classic 1960 western “The
Magnificent Seven” neither challenges or ruins the original’s winning formula.
Of course by original we have to speak in general terms, as the initial
version of this story was first told as Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Japanese action
film “Seven Samurai,” and that epic's plot, about a rag-tag group of rogue
mercenaries who help a small village/town of farmers defend their property from
a murderous group of thieves, has been an oft-utilized source of cinematic
inspiration over the following decades. The first American version spawned a few sequels
of its own, was remade as a TV mini-series in 1998 and Pixar’s “A Bug’s Life”
even took a stab at the same story structure.
Denzel Washington
plays the grizzled hit-man Chisolm. On his way through the west to find a
bounty he's hired by a grief-stricken young girl named Emma Cullen (Haley
Bennett) after she watched her brother get shot down by an evil thief named
Bartholomew Brogue and his group of well-armed cronies. Knowing how outnumbered
and outgunned they will be, Chisolm collects the best gun-men and criminals he
knows to help the town prepare for an all-out war. This group includes Chris
Pratt as the mouthy trickster Josh Faraday, Ethan Hawke the ex-confederate
sniper Goodnight Robicheaux, South Korean superstar Byung-hun Lee as
Robicheaux’s knife-wielding bodyguard Billy Rocks, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as the
wanted-man Vasquez, Martin Sensmeier as the deadly Native American warrior Red
Harvest and Vincent D’Onofrio as the jittery, mountain man spiritualist Jack
Horne.
The movie does a good job at distinguishing all of these
different characters and allowing for enough breath and space between the
shoot-outs to get to know the ensemble and understand their contrasting
dynamics as a team. Denzel is commanding as their sturdy leader and helps to
support the more idiosyncratic players in the cast. While Pratt, Hawke and
Washington get the most to chew on the others do well with their limited screen
time, even if much of the cast barely develops past their archetypes, but with
such an archetypal story, these broad choices function well within the
limitations of the mechanics of the plot.
Given Fuqua’s history in action filmmaking and urban-based
crime thrillers such as “Training Day,” “Bait” and “Equalizer,” less racial
stereotypes than the 1960 version and brings more diversity to the cast,
commenting ever so slightly on America’s moral growing pains after the civil-war.
But the picture exists primarily as a piece of consequence-free, pop-western entertainment
that’s generally more interested in being cool than clever. Here Fuqua evokes not only the original
“Magnificent Seven” but also the blunt ultra-violence of Sam Peckinpah’s the
“The Wild Bunch,” occasional flashes of Sergio Leone’s expressive Spaghetti Western
style, and the post-modern irony of Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.”
As a pastiche the end result is successful as visceral film
experience but a bit empty as a comment on the genre or the movie’s it pays
homage to. Luckily that Kurosawa structure is rock solid and can support just
about any interpretation, so long as the cast is interesting and the director
is capable. In the case of this iteration of “The Magnificent Seven” both of
those boxes have been checked the job has been fulfilled adequately even if it
doesn’t go above or beyond the parameters of the assignment.
Grade: B-
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Oct-2016
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