The Magnificent Seven (2016) | Film Review

We are in the age of the remake, reboot, reimagining, redo, or whatever you want to call it.  Love it or loathe it, it is now a staple of the cinematic landscape and, on occasion, it can be pretty ridiculous.  The span of time separating new versions of films from their predecessors is (I’m looking at you, “Spider-Man”) getting shorter and shorter.  Personally, I don’t bemoan the fact.  I’ll always have my beloved originals and, to be honest, sometimes a remake isn’t all that bad a thing.  If it’s a cookie cutter redo, I’m usually not that impressed. But if filmmakers are able to put a fresh spin on a property and make it new and exciting, I’m all in.  My usual go-to for the latter is John Carpenter’s “The Thing”.  He took a 1950’s B-movie, kept the basic story and setting intact, and then created something fresh that is now looked upon as a classic of horror cinema.  On the other side of the coin, we have something like Gus Van Sant’s 1998 shot-by-shot remake of Hitchcock’s classic “Psycho”.  I think most will agree it was pretty much unnecessary and only served to show what made the original so great.  Remaking what has already solidified itself as a classic in cinema is certainly a tricky business, but I will never say it’s impossible.

Director Antoine Fuqua’s latest, “The Magnificent Seven”, is actually a remake of a remake.  The 1960 classic western of the same name – which starred such Hollywood greats as Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn – was itself a retelling of the famed Japanese film, “Seven Samurai”, directed by Akira Kurosawa.  A world-wide hit, John Sturges’ American version went on to spawn three sequels, a TV series, and countless imitators.  It has been 40-plus years since those magnificent fellas last rode across the silver screen, so my only surprise at the initial news of this one going into production was that it had taken so long.  

I know, it’s a western, and they are far from a sure thing genre-wise at the box-office, but I can’t think of a better property for Hollywood’s hottest talents to want to jump on so as to showcase what makes them so popular, whether it be their acting chops, physicality, charisma, and/or star power. Well, now we have it, and when it comes to blazing talent, you can’t get much hotter than Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt.  Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any two actors better suited to step into the dusty boots of Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, even if those are some mighty big boots to fill.  

The story begins in a small town suffering under the weighty thumb of land-owner Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), a truly despicable piece of work who has money and fame on the brain, and zero sympathy for anyone who stands in his way of attaining either.  When a few of the townsfolk dare to voice their displeasure at his tactics, he is quick to rebuke them with a fatal dose of lead poisoning.  Hot lead, that is. Sometimes I can’t help myself. 

After Bogue and his cronies leave town to head back to the big city, fuming widow Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) realizes something has to be done.  Since most of her fellow townsfolk are reluctant to do much, she sets out to find someone who will.  It isn’t long before she crosses paths with Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), a “duly sworn warrant officer” – which seems to be fancy speech for bounty hunter – who is quick to take up her cause when flashed with a saddle bag of full of “everything”.  I put that in quotes because, if you’ve seen the original, you’ll know exactly what I mean.  If you haven’t, well, it means a heck of a lot of money.  

With wisecracking gambler and gunslinger Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt) in tow, Sam sets out to recruit five more to bolster the ranks.  Not long after, they are joined by sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), knife-slinger extraordinaire Billy Rocks (Byung-Hun Lee), legendary mountain man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), exiled Native American bowman Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), and Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo).  With everyone on board, our very PC group of merry men (and one woman) set off for their inevitable throw down with the mustache twirler.  Cue the many loving shots of our heroes’ journey across the majestic plains.

And that’s it story-wise.  It’s about as basic as a tale can get – introduce the villain, make him as bad as you can, win over the hero with a great sob story and a few coins, rally the troops, and shoot the ever loving crap out of anything and everything, whether it’s moving or not.  Is this a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  “The Magnificent Seven” is pure action escapism, and it doesn’t really strive to be anything more.  The film moves along at a quick pace, there’s lots of chuckles and action, and we get a fist-pumping finale that brings it all to a satisfactory conclusion.  However, when the credit roll at the end – featuring static shots of our heroes set to the iconic score of the original – is the actual emotional highpoint of the whole thing, it doesn’t take long to realize that something went wrong somewhere.

And that something is the first two thirds of the movie.  Now, it’s not a terrible two thirds by any stretch of the imagination.  As I said before, it moves along at a quick pace and gets the job done, but it often moves too quickly, sacrificing back story for the sake of pulling these guys together as quick as possible and getting them to where they are supposed to be.  We know practically nothing about any of them: who they really are, where they’ve been, why they are so quick to join the team.  They are simple copies of characters we’ve seen many times before whose skills at combat and wordplay are their only defining traits.  We do learn a little about a couple of them – namely Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke – but it is bare bones stuff that seems to have been thrown in simply for the sake of some semblance of motivation or sympathy.  At times, someone will say or do something that promises of more to come down the road, but it never does.  It’s a pity.  I did like these characters, and was really hoping to learn more about them. Red Harvest – a Native American with insane bow and arrow skills – was a personal favorite.

The villain of the piece, Bartholomew Bogue, is simply too evil.  There is nothing sympathetic, humorous, or likable about him in the least.  He is just bad, bad, bad, and ultimately that ends up being pretty uninteresting.  It’s almost like Fuqua and his writers were afraid we wouldn’t hate him enough and went overboard.  Well, they went way too far.  Peter Sarsgaard is a fine actor, and he certainly creates a loathsome character, but by making him so one-dimensional, we are left with more of a caricature than a character.  Add to that the fact that he is absent for the majority of the film, and we end up with a character who will not be long remembered, nor cared about, after the lights come up.

One of the things that made the 1960 version so memorable were the interactions between the Seven and the villagers they were protecting.  Whether it was Charles Bronson being adopted by the three kids, Horst Buchholz fighting off the amorous advances of a peasant girl, or Brad Dexter’s constant pestering of the locals about hidden loot he is sure must be hidden there somewhere. These relationships added a lot of emotional weight to the story and gave depth to the characters.  They weren’t just hired guns, they were human beings with real feelings and desires.  Those kinds of relationships are virtually absent in the updated version.  Aside from Emma Cullen, the heroes don’t really connect with any of the other townsfolk they are protecting.  Attempts are made, but they fall flat and end up going nowhere.  When good and evil finally come to blows at the end, most of the townspeople are relegated to cannon fodder.  When they fall, that’s it.  By relegating them to mostly set dressing, they end up being targets whose demise doesn’t affect the Seven or us to the degree that it should.  It’s a definite missed opportunity that would’ve have given the movie that emotional depth it sorely lacked.

And then there are the nitpicks.  One is Vincent D’Onofrio’s voice.  As a physical presence, I really liked him, but whatever the hell he was trying to do with his voice drove me straight up the wall.  I couldn’t even make out what he was saying half the time.  I know he has a reputation for being a bit quirky, but he really needed to tone it down a bit here.  It was distracting and jarring.  The second nitpick was that “Magical” Gatling Gun.  Oh my God, that gun.  Why do I call it magical?  You’ll know when you see it.  I realize that, for the times, it was a powerful weapon, but the gun in this movie is a piece of weaponry any army in the present would fork out a fortune for.  It doesn’t just cause devastation, it releases Hell on Earth.  And the damn thing, which only comes up to a person’s abdomen, is mounted about a mile outside of town.  This whole section just becomes unbelievable and downright laughable.  Some people may brush it aside as an action movie trope not worth worrying about, but when it drops you out of the movie, it is too much.

Okay, I really don’t want to knock this film too much, so let’s move on to what saved this movie for me.  After a somewhat “meh” two thirds, we get to the part everyone is waiting for – the final showdown. And how was it?  To be completely honest, it was a thing of beauty.  Finally, the movie took off and it was a glorious rush to the finish.  The scale of this thing was epic.  Magical Gatling Gun aside, everything suddenly came alive, and I lapped it up wholeheartedly.  The action, the characters, the feelings – all of them were amped up to the nth degree.  This was what I had been hoping for, and I finally got it.  It’s as wonderful as it is long, and it does go on for quite a stretch.  High fives all around for everyone who put this set-piece together.  This was, hands down, one of the best action scenes I’ve seen this year.  It was that damn good.

When the smoke cleared, “The Magnificent Seven” was an overall enjoyable experience.  The cast that was put together did a great job at creating characters we do care about, even if there wasn’t much to them beyond their fighting ability and quippy dialogue.  You have to give credit where credit is due, charisma and talent do go a long way.  Antoine Fuqua kept the pace brisk and the action fun.  The set-ups and dust-ups throughout the first two acts may have been run-of-the-mill, but he nailed it out of the park for the finale.  And even though the story was pretty bare bones and lacked any real emotional depth, it did not irreparably damage the film.

This new version will never overshadow the magnificence of the original, but I don’t think that was ever the goal.  If you’re looking for a fun time at the cinema, and yearn for those olden, golden days when gunslingers walked dusty streets, spittoons were commonplace and disgustingly necessary, and bad guys were just begging to be put down, I reckon you’ll have a good ol’ time.