So Far, So Good..."The Magnificent Seven"

The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Rated PG-13

Starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, Peter Sarsgaard, Luke Grimes

Directed by Antoine Fuqua

The Story:

A town living in fear from a wealthy, ruthless mine owner (Sarsgaard) hires a noble gunslinger (Washington) to help save them. He rounds up a few infamous names to assist him with the job, and the Seven ride into town to help the townspeople learn to stand on their own two feet and repel the enemy.

If it sounds vaguely familiar, then congratulations, you have children and watched A Bug's Life.

Or quite possibly you grew up with the original western, The Magnificent Seven with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen.

And the magnificent Elmer Bernstein score.

Then of course, it would be remiss to not mention Seven Samurai, since it's the version that got this whole story on film in the first place and is considered by many to be a masterpiece.

So where does the newest version land?

As I mention in the title, so far, so good.

It's not a game-changer, and likely to bring westerns back to the silver screen on an annual basis or anything, but it's a nice star-studded remake with enough changes to the characters and motivations to make it worthwhile.

To be fair, I also went back and watched the 1960 version afterwards, and it too has its flaws and isn't quite the perfect western I remembered it to be.

Overall, I quite liked the majority of character changes that the remake made on the characters. They all became a little more three dimensional than their 1960s counterpart.

Plus, the coward of the group wasn't so much a coward, as a suffer of PTSD, and I thought that was quite a novel idea.

Of course, they started the movie a bit over-the-top with just how villainous our bad guy really was.

Had they dialed that back a bit, I think they could have possibly matched or bettered the 1960 version.

Plus, if they would have used the Bernstein theme before the very end, I might have graded this one higher as well.

I mean, you sit there just dying to hear the theme!

:)

Final Grade:  B-