The Magnificent Seven is a remake of of one the best loved westerns of all time. That classic film still holds up today, so this new version had a lot of work to do if it wants to be remembers. This Magnificent Seven does do a lot of work, but it’s not going to go down in history as anything other than a summer blockbuster that misfired and dropped a month late.
Director Antoine Fuqua (Olympus Has Fallen)does a marvelous job with the basics in this rendition, but he lacks the depth to pull it out of the muck of his past action flicks. The cinematography here is quite lovely and that’s refreshing in a movie world filmed with such a reliance on CG work. Knowing that these sweeping shots are real locations gives the film the perfect feel and really helps draw the audience in. It’s a pretty film and was worth the ticket price simply as a visual spectacle. Unfortunately a film of this nature with so many characters needs to do more than simply look pretty.
You are working with some legendary material, not only with the original western, but with the Japanese original from Akira Kurosawa. Seven Samurai is one of my favorite films of all time, and one that I’ve written about several times before, and what made each special were the characters. This is because the underlying story is pretty basic, especially in our modern times of deep and thought provoking films.
Where The Magnificent Seven really shoots blanks is with the extended cast. Denzel Washington leads the ensemble as Sam Chisolm and does a solid job. It’s not his best work, but that’s more an issue with the writing and not him as an actor. There is a lot more to Chisolm, but it never goes anywhere, so when he gives the films final monologue of sorts it falls flat. With such a large cast it’s a challenge for character growth of any real depth and that can be seen here. Chris Pratt plays his number two, but his character of Faraday never really connects. It really just feels like Star Lord in the old west and makes Pratt seem very one-dimensional as an actor.
The rest of the cast has big names like Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio, but they are never fully developed beyond a basic introduction and only the thinnest hit of something more. You really end up wanting to know more about these people and when one of the cast dies in the films grand shootout, you don’t feel any real sense of loss.
The team of seven just sort of come together to save a town from a right asshole that has taken over. But even with a two-hour run time the film never gets very deep and any development comes as mere throwaway lines. Each character plays right into the stereotypes that we are used to. Other than Chisolm, the entire cast is simply one-dimensional and I can’t even remember their names. In fact, when the film ended and the camera panned across the graves of those that didn’t make it I couldn’t put a name to a face. Everything just felt so paint-by-numbers.
Oh, and that last scene in the film nearly killed anything the film helped build. Having just sat through two-hours of beautiful cinematography and camera work it was a kick to the balls to see something as simple a a few gravestones done in CG. Hell, the entire meadow and city panning shot is done in CG and looks utterly terrible and out of place. How hard could it have been to get the B-team to film a couple of real graves in a field? All that work just so we can see a playing card fly by? It was enough to make me angry as I left the theater.
But it’s not a complete loss as the action is top notch. The movie gives us two big shootouts, with the ending one going on almost too long. Yet strangely the action feels hollow at times as main characters simply get lost in the mix. The Native American on the team simply disappears for what feels like ages after he runs out of arrows. Vincent D’Onofrio get’s the only death that tries to hit you in the gut, but this falls flat because he has no connection with the bad guy killing him. We know he has a past scalping the local Indians, but when the government called off the scalp trade he lost his way. He also had a family and kids that are only touched upon once. It really feels like his fight was supposed to have a deeper meaning, but the film never makes it there. He hates Indians so and Indian kills him.
If you are looking for a good popcorn flick that doesn’t ask a lot of you then The Magnificent Seven will satisfy, but if you are looking for a film with some meat to it this one is anything buy Magnificent. It’s a real shame too, as the western is almost a lost genre of film that keeps trying to make a comeback. In the end this is simply The Avengers in the old west only not quite as good.
3/5
‘Good’
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