Peter Sarsgaard’s convincingly creepy mining mogul Bartholomew Bogue kills anyone who crosses his plans to strip all the farms of hard-luck burgh Rose Creek in his ceaseless quest for gold. He and Fuqua have collaborated on two previous films, including “Training Day”, which earned Washington his Oscar.
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Washington is one of the last remaining movie stars in the purest form of the term and how he’s never done a Western before now is perplexing, especially with the ease and confidence with which he strolls across the screen wearing nothing but black from the tips of his boots to the top of his hat. In an astonishing show of restraint, Elmer Bernstein’s famous score from the 1960 film is only heard at the end. “The Magnificent Seven” may be iconic, but “Seven Samurai” is seminal, one of the greatest films of all time, and the new movie’s script is based not on the Sturges film, but on that of Kurosawa. Then there’s Josh Farraday (Chris Pratt), a likeable gambler who enjoys blowing stuff up, Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), sharpshooter extraordinaire and expert tracker Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio). Well kind of. If you’re a fan of the original, put all thoughts of that aside as this new take is more like a western version of Suicide Squad – less back story and more action. And, Pratt is not only good looking, he’s amusing, and in “The Magnificent Seven”, he makes bad look very good. Because while there’s some playful banter among the characters, their personal stories have been largely obliterated with the exception of Hawke, whose role is a sort-of hybrid of the parts played by Robert Vaughn (the self-doubting killer) and Brad Dexter in the original. Yes, we’ve seen this numerous times before.
The film was flat and joyless and did not take the opportunity to get further, more in depth and more political, according to The Guardian. Peter Sarsgaard is impressive as the antagonist! Hawke is captivating as the Southern Civil War vet (nicknamed the Angel of Death) whose struggle with fear and doubt get the better of him.
The most developed characters were Chisolm and Faraday.
Fuqua, who most recently directed Washington in “The Equalizer”, knows how to stage crowd-pleasing action scenes, upping the ante from the 1960 edition by throwing in a lavish Gatling-gun attack and depicting the town’s children in peril (all within the limits of a PG-13 rating).
Rekord has one double ticket to give away.
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Bringing the American Wild West to life was no easy task, just ask the cast of “The Magnificent Seven”, who endured scorching heat and torrential rain in wool costumes in the Louisiana summer. “You can’t do the same thing every era”, says Fuqua. Fuqua’s film, set in the 1870s, has a posse so breathtakingly multi-racial it would seem to turn genre convention on its head.
