The Magnificent Seven

Dir: Antoine Fuqua

2016

****

I'm not sure anyone would dare remake Akira Kurosawa's classic SevenSamurai as a Samurai film but I can see why a remake of the 1960 Cowboy remake would appeal and for once I actually welcomed the remake. The Magnificent Seven 1960 is also a classic in its own right and one of the few times that I would argue a remake was worthwhile. Kurosawa himself was influenced by old westerns, so it was a nice way of an original idea going full circle. Although not as popular, the 1980 sci-fi space opera Battle Beyond the Stars was also a great take on the idea, adapting aspects from both films. I love The Magnificent Seven 1960 but it is fair to say that it wasn't a perfect film. There was an arrogance about it, it was of its time and as much as I love Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn and Eli Wallach, they relied on their statuses and it was a bit of an ego war between the lot of them. Robert Vaughn played one of my favourite characters but he only had about seventeen lines in the whole film. Seven Samurai (and even Battle Beyond the Stars) had way more character development and Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk's updated script clearly understands the importance of this. Antoine Fuqua's Magnificent Seven incorporates all the best bits of Samurai and Magnificent and builds on it. Each character is rich in personality and isn't just a big name actor with a supposed skill. It is difficult to compare the 2016 cast with the 1960 cast but I will go as far to say that 2016's is far more interesting. Denzel Washington is a much finer actor than Yul Brynner with far more range and appeal and Chris Pratt is not Steve McQueen by any stretch but his character is much more than just the cheeky one, not that either character is anything like the original. Ethan Hawke and Lee Byung-hun play partners with a real feeling of believability about them. Their characters are a sort of split version of James Coburn's character, which works really well. Maunuel Garcia-Rulfo plays a Mexican on the run who joins the seven in return for his freedom and Vincent D'Onofrio plays a skilled tracker, a religious man who would track and kill natives for a paying government in a former life. The last of the seven and easily the most interesting is Martin Sensmeier's Red Harvest, a Comanche warrior who tracks the six and tells them that his elders had told him his path was different and that he should leave his people in order to find it, choosing to join the men on their mission. Fuqua wanted to make a film that incorporated all aspects of western life as it really was, rather than as a conscious effort to make the film politically correct and I believe it is what makes the film. That and the fact that as well as there being silent hostility between the men due to their differences (reflecting the time) they soon bond (again, rather subtly) in the pursuit of universal good. Nothing about the story is really that unrealistic, it’s a great representation of the old west and the people who lived there. The seven are joined by a few townsfolk who hire them, Haley Bennett's widowed Emma Cullen being a predominant character who is, rather refreshingly, written without any of the stereotypes you'd expect from a woman in a male-led cowboy film. Peter Saragaard plays the film's villain, a slightly more complex character than previous seven films with far more venom and sinister intentions. Each character is brilliantly written and well performed with each actor giving it their all. It was quite a personal film for Fuqua as he credits his career to his grandmother with whom he spent many hours watching old westerns with. After every take he would ask himself if his grandmother would be entertained by it. I think it maybe his best film to date or at least on par with Training Day. It is everything you could want from a western, a remake and a amalgamation of the original ideas. Its pure popcorn but also intelligent and the sort of western for people who say they don't like westerns without giving the genre a chance. The Magnificent Seven 2016 also represents the last film scored by the great James Horner who died before the film's completion. Instead of simply reusing the much loved theme of the 1960 film (although the original theme plays out over the end credits), Horner wrote a much richer sounding, more subtle score that was completed by his friend and composer Simon Franglen after his untimely death. It exceeded all expectations, which is more than I can say for most films of 2016.