I disliked John Sturges' 'The Magnificent Seven' with a passion.
Not only because the film was a typically measly remake of a timeless cinematic milestone; in this case, it was Akira Kurosawa's mammoth masterpiece 'Seven Samurai' (one of the greatest epics ever filmed, in my opinion) watered down to a star-studded yet utterly predictable shoot-em-up western actioner that had none of the complexity, well-etched characterisation or even the thundering action of the original. It is also because Sturges, the man who made one of the most effortlessly thrilling action classics of all time with 'The Great Escape', simply did not make anything out of that crackling premise or that cast of fine actors and only ended up making a middling film that is terribly bland and unfairly hailed as a classic by cinephiles.
Does that mean that I would enjoy a remake of the same film, done with a different template and some more tweaks to the elements of the original?
Hell, yeah.
Antoine Fuqua's version is hardly the same tale. Closer in vein to both Kurosawa's classic as well as some of the darker westerns of the 60s and 70s, it is a film that breaks through the shackles to the original. Sure, it is about seven mercenaries for hire fending off a village but that's it. Fuqua's 'The Magnificent Seven' reinvents the same premise with reckless glee and loose invention, even as pushing for a meaner streak, and the result is a film that, while hardly serious or resonant, is nevertheless a whole lot of deliriously thrilling cinematic fun, the kind that best matinee entertainers are made of.
Western films had given up being whole-heartedly entertaining from the time the likes of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah started exploring the rougher edges of their cowboy characters and the likes of Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and even Quentin Tarantino followed suit, handing us tales of the Wild West that told more about the harsh truths of life on the frontier rather than giving us plenty of wisecracking standoffs to whistle and hoot at. Fuqua's film resists all these tropes and plays out like one of those swashbuckling gun-slinging romps, in which there is hefty hedonism in seeing hat-wearing, rugged cowboys reach for their cocked pistols ready to draw and fire. The pleasure of the film is genuinely enthralling but there is also enough room for a seriousness, a well-balanced storytelling sharpness that transcends its simplistic plot quite well.
'The Magnificent Seven' starts on a promising menace but a bit too awkwardly, as the director is too busy doffing his hat, all too obviously at films that have come before. There is a prelude that has shades of both Tarantino and Eastwood and as we see- in a refreshing twist- the eponymous bunch of the seven vigilantes hired by Haley Bennett's strong-willed widow Emma Cullen to reclaim a little outpost of a town from a devilish villain and his army, the film is mostly paying homage- not only to Sturges but also to the styles of George Roy Hill and Howard Hawks. There is enough gritty style in display, for sure- Mauro Fiore shoots both the sunbaked prairie grasslands and desolate, smoky and sleepy town saloons with an eye for detail- but the film sags in this point with the filmic tribute- referencing clumsily even one scene from 'The Revenant'- making us wait desperately for the moment when the guns actually start firing.
Oh, but when the guns actually start going boom boom, it is here when Fuqua lets it rip and this is when 'The Magnificent Seven' becomes really its own fast and furious beast in the vein of Leone's giddily action-packed 'A Fistful Of Dynamite' or, even better, Sam Peckinpah given a gorgeously healthy dash of blockbuster, big-screen thrills.
The dusty, sweltering standoffs, for instance, are modelled beautifully on any one of the classic, unforgettable duels from both 'The Good, The Bad And The Ugly' and, in its somewhat sobering climax, 'Once Upon A Time In the West'. And yet, Fuqua adds his own brutal zing to these moments; one of the seven, a lumbering, aging wizened tracker, leaps literally like a ravenous bear on his charging opponents. The big, bustling and dirty battle in the end packs in the kind of hyper-kinetic fire and fury that comes admirably close to the wallop of Kurosawa's roaring thrills and spills. That relentless barrage of bullets and bodies has an unhinged, Peckinpah-style punch to them- at one point, even a gigantic Gatling Gun is brought in to decimate an entire outpost to smithereens.
The narrative- by Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk- sticks mostly to the decided 'shoot-them-up' template but also makes room for some sophistication in between the old-school action and camaraderie. What makes this version work in many ways is the creative licence taken with the plot. The arch nemesis of the original- Eli Wallach's primitive Mexican bandit Calvera- is here replaced by the devious capitalist Bartholomew Bogue, played by a convincingly snarling Peter Saarsgard. The central conflict here is that of besieged townfolk resisting destructive progress, of an older world defying the advances of a new era. Even the ragtag team of saviours is not an all-American bunch of outlaws. Sam Chisolm, the unquestioned leader of the outfit, is a descendant of slavery and so is the knife-throwing mercenary of this version. There is also a Comanche warrior in the fray and there is also a Confederate veteran who is still haunted by the deaths that he has witnessed. The sheer breakneck pace of the film does skimp on developing each of these fully but each of these tweaks adds welcome unconventional grit to a standard Western action premise.
Also, Fuqua has a grand time with his cast. The original picked out top listers and ended up making only a few of them truly memorable (Yul Brynner and Charles Bronson got most of the moments). But this version has ace actors Denzel Washington as a charismatic yet cold-blooded Chisolm, Ethan Hawke as the torn Goodnight Robicheaux and Vincent D'Onofrio as an authentically world-weary yet warm Jack Horne sharing the space with intriguing newbies- of which special mention should go to Chris Pratt's Josh Faraday for nailing devilish mischief with the spirit of a true hero.
'The Magnificent Seven' is bare-bones action filmmaking at its most effective. Fuqua, who has struggled a lot with films trying too hard to impress, plays it cool here and ends up delivering matinee entertainment of the highest order. It is like a glorious, old-school J. Lee Thompson romp done with unexpected grittiness and its main character's name also rhymes with a John Wayne classic of yore. All it needed, sorely, was a searing Ennio Morricone score.
My Rating- 3 and a half stars out of 5.
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