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-

100 Greatest Movies of All Time...That I Own. # 39 ~ The Magnificent Seven

Back to back John Sturges movies.

Sometimes things like that happen.

I would say that I saw this movie for the first time within the last fifteen years.

I was blown away by the movie.  Great actors, great direction, great storytelling.

The movie?

A Bug's Life.

Only that one had a much happier ending for all involved.

So sometime over the last decade, I caught The Magnificent Seven for the first time, and was blown away again!

How could they have copied that great Pixar film, 40 years earlier?

Time travel!

But no, that simply tells you how good the basic premise of the story is.  And no, I've never seen Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the movie upon which THIS movie was based.

So, about half of the Seven were in yesterday's film, and you know they must've known that working with Sturges was a good thing, because finding two great films like that within three years doesn't happen to many actors.

So the story, for those that have never seen it (and believe me, if you've watched ANY TV or movie in your lifetime, there has been some variation of this story told time after time):

A bad dude and his fellow baddies terrorize a town year after year.  They steal, plunder and basically own the place.  Finally, the townspeople have enough, and they hire...

The A-Team.

See, I told you you've seen this somewhere!

They put out the call for someone to protect their town.

In rides 7 men to stand against the 40+ bad guys and try and save the day.

Naturally, they will be successful, but in the case of this version, not all of the heroes will survive the encounter.

While I have mentioned there was great acting, I'm not going to single out the actors today.

I would like to take  a moment to acknowledge Elmer Bernstein for his contribution to the film with the Theme for the Magnificent Seven.  Even if you don't think you know it...

You know it.

The movies that he was the composer for, read like a who's who of awesome movies from the 50s-70s.  Yes, he was in charge of The Great Escape as well... he plays well with Sturges.


So to sum this one up...

This is the movie for people that don't like Westerns...have never seen a Western... or wouldn't know a good movie if it him them in the butt.

If they don't walk away from this one going..."that was kinda cool..."

Then there is no hope for them.

: )