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Denzel Washington leads his gang of seven wildly different souls to do battle for the little guy |
Director: Antoine Fuqua
Cast: Denzel Washington (Sam Chisolm), Chris Pratt (Joshua
Faraday), Ethan Hawke (Goodnight Robicheaux), Vincent D’Onofrio (Jack Horne),
Byung-hun Lee (Billy Rocks), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (Vasquez), Martin Sensmeier
(Red Harvest), Haley Bennett (Emma Cullen), Peter Sarsgaard (Bartholomew Bogue),
Luke Grimes (Teddy Q)

In 1879, the village of Rose Creek is besieged by would-be industrialist
Bartholomew Brogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who orders the villagers to leave as he
plans to expand the local mine. Newly widowed Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) sets
out to recruit gunslingers to help protect the town. Warrant Officer Sam
Chisolm (Denzel Washington) is her first recruit, and he helps her to gather
six others from drunken cardsharp Joshua Faraday (Chris Pratt) to legendary
sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke). But the battle to protect the
village will lead to many good men six feet under before our heroes can have the
chance to prevail…
One thing’s for sure. In 60 years’ time they won’t be
playing this film every bank holiday weekend. That doesn’t mean this is a bad film,
it’s just quite an average one. It’s decently done, has several good scenes and
even one or two witty lines in among a fairly routine script, but there is very
little imagination or inspiration behind this. It’s got a decent cast of actors,
but you always feel they are lifting average material rather than working with
the good stuff. While the original film combined a sense of boyhood heroics and
some iconic performances with some exploration of the emptiness of the life of
a gunslinger and the attraction of a normal life, this film manages to deliver much
less on all these counts.
So first the good parts. Much of the gun-toting action is
very well done. The first shootout as our heroes arrive in the town is terrific (see link below),
full of thrilling beats and rewindable moments. To be honest, it’s the best
moment of the film, and as close as it comes to capturing the excitement of old-school gunslinging action. The final battle scene is decent, but offers
generally more of the same with additional (no spoilers to say) sacrifice. Even without the inspirations of
the original film, many of the character beats will be familiar to the watching
audience. I successfully predicted which of the cowboys would survive early in the
film, and only one death is near to a surprise. It’s well done, but it’s not
got the filmmaking expertise of Kevin Costner’s Open Range, with its final small-band-against-an-army structure, nor
that film’s intelligent and low-key analysis of the cost of violence.
It’s that lack of human insight that I think is one of the
film’s principal weaknesses. The original had more to say about the
damage a life of violence can inflict on people, and the longing even the most
hardened man of the world can find for the
simple life – as well as the lengths they will go to in order to protect it. This
film offers none of that. The motivations for the seven in joining are
incredibly thin, almost after-thoughts. At least two members of the team simply
turn-up, as if dropped from the sky. Team leader Chris has a “very personal”
motivation, signposted from the very start, that serves to undermine much of the
depths we seem to learn about his character during the film – as well as making
him just another “man looking for revenge” architype.
On top of that, a serious trick is missed when setting this
film near the end of the Western era. Already the time of these lawless
gunslingers is coming to an end, and they have no place in the modern world.
The villain is a sort of corporate bully, launching a hostile take-over of the village
for his mining company. There is plenty of thematic material to mine here of
these men taking a stand not only against the strong persecuting the weak, but
also against the onrush of time that is leaving them behind. Now I’m not expecting
the film to be a serious socio-economic discussion, but I’d like to watch a
film that at least tips the hat to ideas like this (or any ideas at all) rather
than just push through a well-filmed but-by-the-numbers remake.
Saying all this, it is pretty entertaining in an
unchallenging way. It does make you want to go back and re-watch the original
version (which was itself, to be fair, little more than a crowd pleaser). But
that’s kind of all it is – and it doesn’t have any ambition to be more. But
it’s a good watch and some of the updating ideas work very well. The
multiracial composition of the seven works very well, and Haley Bennett as the “Eighth”
member of the team, is a strongly written role that feels like a character
rather than an accessory. Washington can do this role standing on his head, but
brings his customary authority. Chris Pratt is at his Harrison Fordish charming best, particularly
on the edge of bursting out into a
childish grin, in gleeful excitement at being paid to play cowboys.
Hawke is saddled with the thematic content as a gunslinger with PTSD, but makes
a good fist of it. Much of the rest of the gang are a collection of moments
rather than characters, but do their jobs well.
The Magnificent Seven,
it seems too easy to say, isn’t magnificent. It’s an unambitious film
without any real thinking or imagination in its conception. It seems scared of
introducing anything too conceptual or thought-provoking in its setting or
plot. It’s just about entertaining enough to survive while you are watching it,
but its life is going to be little longer than the two hours you watch it, not
the 60 years of its predecessor.
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