Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt star in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures’ THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.
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As in Seven Samurai (and to a lesser extent, the first Magnificent Seven), the lengthy real battle is saved for the films climax, when the action goes into relentless mode, and all hell breaks loose and small spoiler there arent seven Magnificent people left standing. It doesn’t kill the film, but with the genre peaking nearly 50 years ago it doesn’t exactly make The Magnificent Seven fresh.
I don’t want to get caught up with counting, but director Antoine Fuqua’s (“Training Day”) latest effort has more to do with 2001’s “Ocean’s Eleven” than anything.
Star Cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Ruflo, Martin Senmeier, Peter Sarsgaard and Haley Bennett Director: Antoine Fuqua Producer: Roger Birnbaum and Todd Black Claps For: Performances, Cinematography and Background Score Slaps For: Fails to be a compelling drama What’s New: Nothing Popcorn Refill: Interval Plot: 1870. Giving Washington a starring role in a Western is a pretty good reason to remake The Magnificent Seven, but beyond that nothing truly feels new with the film.
The story: The farming town of Rose Creek has been taken over by thugs working for robber baron Bart Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard).
Fuqua makes unsubtle, burley movies about men reclaiming their masculinity and it is clear why he was drawn to this remake of a remake (the 1960 movie was based on Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai from 1954).
On the whole, the film, adapted by Nic Pizzolatto (“True Detective”) and Richard Wenk (“The Equalizer”), resembles Clint Eastwood’s 1985 masterpiece “Pale Rider” as much as John Sturges’ 1960 film. Plus, in an age where the sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero genres dominate most mainstream entertainment, it is refreshing to see an old-fashioned western with a few modern twists. As a kid growing up, I saw just about every Western under the sun.
True to more enlightened modern movie conventions, Haley Bennett’s avenging townswoman Emma Cullen plays a larger role in the proceedings than female characters in previous films, making this nearly The Magnificent Eight.
“David Ehrlich (Indiewire): “‘The Magnificent Seven’ 2016 is nearly as fun as it is familiar.
I don’t know how else to say this other than I had a good time. What comes before is unremarkable but diverting: Pratt overdoes his hyper-masculine shtick, but Hawke and Washington are watchable as always, and D’Onofrio is delightfully weird. The new band of outlaws are far more ethnically diverse than their whiter-than-white celluloid ancestors, and are led by an African-American, though everyone seems too afraid of Sam Chisolm to actually point that out.
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He says more of a retelling of the story, with many major elements tweaked so that, as Fuqua told Yahoo Movies, it “represents our world today”.
