Years ago, my dad used to watch old Westerns with all four of his kids on Friday nights, and the original Magnificent Seven was one of the ones I remember well. My siblings and I already loved Steve McQueen from The Great Escape, and I never forgot Elmer Berstein’s original 1960 score. In college, I was friends with seven young men who put a huge framed Magnificent Seven movie poster over their mantel, aspiring to be the gun-slinging heroes of that iconic black and white film.
The new Magnificent Seven is in some ways better than the original, in many ways nowhere near as good, and also a superhero movie in its own right. It joins a long line of remakes, as Hollywood struggles to dream up new stories and perpetually falls back on the tried and true legends.
The story begins in a Western town in the late 1800s about three days’ ride from Sacramento, probably somewhere in the Sierras. A man named Bartholomew Bogue has taken control of a small mining town, greedy for its gold and land. When the townspeople lead a small rebellion, Bogue and his henchmen murder several men in the middle of town.
Heartbroken widow Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) takes off “seeking righteousness, but if I can’t have that I’ll take revenge,” and crosses paths with bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington). Swayed by her story, Chisolm agrees to defend the town against Bogue. He assembles a rag-tag group of sharpshooters and drifters who are looking for a mission, and if not a mission then at least some money for their trouble. Together, the seven men plus Emma return to the little town for a showdown.
It’s a Western, so there are plenty of spinning guns and a few spinning knives, lots of saloons, and some magnificent scenery. “It’s not that different from a superhero movie,” my husband commented, referring to the many superhero remakes in theaters recently. “It just has a different style, which is appealing and more realistic.” Indeed, the seven men are all heroes in their own right, each with flaws that must be overcome, and with a sense of honor and dignity that their rough exterior and shady pasts belie. Ethan Hawke plays a Confederate hero who is terrified of guns, Chris Pratt is a swashbuckling renegade who has “always wanted to blow something up,” and Denzel Washington holds the group together with his iconic quiet strength.
This past opening weekend, The Magnificent Seven earned an impressive $35 million at the box office. The Western film is not dead, and in fact may be making a comeback recently with hits like Hell or High Water (released August 12) and The Revenant (released in 2015), encompassing many different styles of the traditional Western. At the very least, The Magnificent Seven is excellent entertainment, and at the most it is a story that we would all like to tell with our lives, in one form or another.
Movie times: click here
Genre: Action, Western
Actors: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Haley Bennett
Rating: PG-13 (for language and violence)
Running Time: 2 hours and 13 minutes
