Antoine Fuqua may be one of the best matinee directors in the business right now. That is to say he has far more movies under his belt that are just okay or passable rather than outright great but even in his weakest films, he always knows how to use style and performances to his advantage.
His eye for these sort of crowd pleasing stylistic narrative flourishes serve him well in “The Magnificent Seven,” a movie that more or less gets away with doing substantially less than it should by virtue of doing what it focuses on accomplishing with an almost infectious sense of fun and sincerity.
When the innocent folks of an old western town under the oppressive siege of the sadistic self-important industrialist Bart Bogue get caught in the crossfire of his aggressive pursuit of mining operations that will strip the town’s resources, Emma Cullen (Haley Bennet) takes to nearby settlements in order to bring him down by hiring the titular would be band of mercenaries portrayed by Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Byung-hun Lee, and Martin Sensmeier.
Contrary to the usual reactions regarding the culture of remakes perpetuated by today’s entertainment industry, “The Magnificent Seven” is a remake that I wasn’t particularly clamoring for but didn’t oppose in any way either.
Unlike most remakes that would have been conceptually lacking in potential even if they weren’t just blatant attempts at cash grabs aimed at a culture obsessed with nostalgia, the original movie in this equation just isn’t the same sort of sacred cow.
The 1960 original starring Yul Brynner is itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s adventure classic “Seven Samurai,” and helped to perpetuate story tropes integral to the fundamental makeup of films driven by ensemble casts that it didn’t create. The storyline of the ragtag misfits overcoming their differences and banding together for the greater good has been replicated and tweaked so often that this is far from the first remake of said film regardless of whether or not it shares the same name. It’s not even the first remake of the aforementioned remake to share said film’s name; that honor belongs to the 1998 television series starring Michael Biehn and Ron Perlman.
“The Magnificent Seven” has become more of a conceptual foundation serving to represent the cultural sensibilities and production values of the generation that happens to be making it at that point in time, which is genuinely fascinating to watch from the standpoint of media historicism.
The 1960 film was merely the first step towards taking Kurosawa’s own groundbreaking film narrative and gradually transcending it into such over time through a localized remake that is an excellent codifier of the genre that it represents but not the legendary masterpiece its reputation and historical value may want you to buy it for.
In that specific regard, John Sturges 1960 film is very similar Fuqua’s, except that where his film is great but not legendary, 2016’s “The Magnificent Seven” is just good but far from greatness.
To reiterate, Fuqua manages to excellently create the style of an old western within modern production sensibilities that keeps the attention of the audience but doesn’t romanticize the American 1800’s the way that it was back at the height of the genre’s popularity.
It’s liberal enough for anybody that isn’t a white man to get their character’s across to the crowds without the oppressive specter of institutional inequality to repetitiously beat them down but gritty and real enough to remind you that you probably wouldn’t have wanted to live their even if you were in the unpersecuted majority.
The attention to detail stages a solid backdrop for the cast to give great performances and even show off their own chemistry with great little beats of rivalry and camaraderie that occasionally leave you asking if their ribbing is in friendly jest or building to some sort of inconvenient confrontation. “The Magnificent Seven” is very much driven by the charm of its characters and the performances of its talented cast, which somehow manages to be competent and respectably diverse without feeling forced within the confines of a setting that should have theoretically rebelled against it.
Because you buy into the stakes of the town and what these unique individuals are all capable of it makes the action sequences, particularly a brutal climax that puts the entire town at stake in more ways than one feel all the more rewarding.
Unfortunately, the downfall of “The Magnificent Seven” lies in Fuqua’s own downfall, namely that he just isn’t very good at juggling more than one thread at a time. This is a screenplay that clearly isn’t suited to his sensibilities but probably could have used a bit of punch up even if it were.
This film has the daunting task of telling the stories of 7 unique individuals, establishing a sinister but believable antagonist, and making us care about the plight of this town that its heroes must defend without having any initial stakes in its wellbeing. The ship manages to stay afloat and perform but while the film manages to tell a complete and effectively diverting story, it’s never a particularly emotionally gripping one.
Cutting corners on the cohesion between the personal character arcs leads to a lot of great moments that are undercut by almost laughable levels of sloppiness.
Sensmeier’s role as a rogue solo Comanche warrior is provided with a strong intro but is left to mostly wander the set for the remainder of the film until a confrontation with another Comanche warrior apparently working for Bogue comes so far out of left field to give his character some kind of closure that it almost feels like a joke.
Washington and Garcia-Rulfo put in admirable work but their sketchy motivations and scattered screen time prevent their performances from really going further than they should. Pratt and D’Onofrio probably take the biggest hits of the cast, with D’Onofrio’s bafflingly incoherent introduction detracting from a subtly sweet story of a simple man being wooed over by good people into acting out of genuine righteousness, and Pratt’s deceptively gifted goofball never really honing in on a defining trait beyond being sly.
Despite clocking in at 2 hours and 10 minutes the movie feels like it oddly has a few chunks missing that could have enhanced the general sense of development. An extra 10 minutes would have been greatly beneficial but the film honestly could have probably made up for that if simply made a more effective usage of its time.
Overall, the biggest problem with “The Magnificent Seven” that is fed into by its competent but unmemorable execution of a script in need of extra polish is that the movie just doesn’t shoot for greatness. It calculates the audience standard of average and sets out to purely be nothing more than a popcorn crowd pleaser.
While seeing all of that talent involved go to waste on something that could have been more with the right sensibilities can be a frustration however, the film that we do get is nevertheless entertaining.
Ordinarily sitting through a movie aiming for a lower bar with the excuse of “just wanting to be fun” is probable cause for ire for me but after sitting through a relentless summer of crowd pleasing matinees that reduced my brain to drivel, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due.
Over the course of 3 months I’ve seen a team movie in which the ability to enjoy its cast was suffocated by its own sociopolitical allegory and world building special effects, an action film built on the back of a CGI budget that seems structurally sound before collapsing under the thumb of all logic after putting forth 2 seconds of thought similar to dumping a thimble of water over a mound of cotton candy, and another team movie about antiheroes saving people so stupidly assembled that they introduced everybody in a 20 minute series of flashbacks framed by a conversation by 3 people at a diner table on a studio set.
I have seen crowd pleasers gone wrong. “The Magnificent Seven” is a solid Saturday matinee but unfortunately nothing more than just that.
Magnificent Seven gets a Pretty Decent 6 out of 10
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