Review: The Magnificent Seven

A small town is being bullied by a nasty capitalist named Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) who offers a measly amount of money for the land and kills anyone who dares to object. This causes widowed Emma (Haley Bennett) and fellow townie Teddy (Luke Grimes) to go in search of mercenaries to stand up to Bogue and his men (who include Cam Gigandet). Enter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), a bounty hunter who accepts the call despite there not being any riches involved (These be po’ folk, after all). He in turn recruits wily gambler and heavy drinker Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt), as well as Chisolm’s old war buddy Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), a Civil War sharpshooter whose war experience has left him with a possible loss of nerve. Robicheaux’s Asian companion and knife expert Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee) also decides to join the fight. Eventually the troupe is rounded out by (I think) Half-French Half-Mexican bandit Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, making zero impression) whom Chisolm declines to take the bounty on in exchange for his aide here, grizzled tracker and ‘Injun’ killer Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), and a mostly silent Comanche named Red Harvest (played by Alaskan-born Martin Sensmeier).

The 1960 original is my favourite western of all-time, I even think it’s superior to the film it was born out of, Akira Kurosawa’s samurai epic “The Seven Samurai”, which just didn’t have the iconic characters for me to gravitate towards. Anyway, I knew this 2016 remake from Antoine Fuqua (the terribly overrated “Training Day” and the abysmal “King Arfa: King of the Cockney Soccer Hooligans”) was not going to please me, nor in any way equal the John Sturges western it has taken the name of. I just hoped it would at least be an entertaining western in a time where few are even made. Unfortunately, this is a dreary and lifeless affair so cluttered with characters of little to no distinction that for a while there I thought there were 9 protagonists, not just 7. Scripted by Richard Wenk (“16 Blocks”, “The Mechanic”, “The Equaliser”), Nic Pizzolatto (TV’s “True Detective”), and an uncredited John Lee Hancock (writer-director of the rather off-putting and corny “The Blind Side”), this is ahead of only the overrated “A Bug’s Life” so far as poor versions of this same basic tale are concerned (The best of which are the aforementioned John Sturges film, Roger Corman’s “Battle Beyond the Stars”, and the underrated comedy version “Three Amigos!”). Yes, even the Cannon cheapie “Seven Magnificent Gladiators” with Sybil Danning and Lou Ferrigno is more fun than this limp and lethargic disappointment.

It’s a shame, because there’s a few elements here that do work somewhat well. It all looks terrific, as Fuqua and cinematographer Mauro Fiore (“Avatar”, “The Equaliser”) show that they know how to shoot and light a western. The shot composition in particular shows that these guys have at least seen a couple of westerns in their time. Unfortunately, Fuqua and his screenwriters have no clue how to make a western overall, or at least not a good one.

It isn’t that they’ve blended a few of the characters from the 1960 film together or outright changed them (and really, none of the characters are the same as in the original, certainly not by name), it’s more that the characters just don’t resonate anywhere near as much. The best of the lot is actually Ethan Hawke, playing a mixture of the Robert Vaughn ‘veteran sharp-shooter reduced to a quivering mess’ role (my favourite character in the 1960 film) and Brad Dexter’s gold-happy friend of Yul Brynner’s. Hawke is terrific and his character is by far the most compelling, though Fuqua and his screenwriters sabotage him at one point. They try to make up for it near the end, but it was too late and had left a sour taste in my mouth. Byung-Hun Lee also fares perfectly fine in the James Coburn role, and it’s interesting that the part has gone from Japanese in “The Seven Samurai” to American in the 1960 “Magnificent Seven” and now South Korean here. I wish he were given more to do, but I had the same wish of Coburn (one of my all-time favourite actors), as the role isn’t terribly large in either version. Vincent D’Onofrio doesn’t appear to be playing anyone remotely similar from the 1960 film, but his performance definitely seems inspired by Edmond O’Brien in “The Wild Bunch” (right down to his final moment on screen, actually). He’s not in the film enough, but when he is, he’s a hoot and a half. It’s not a subtle performance, but at least someone appears to be having fun here. The other standout performance is from an incredibly sweaty, sickly-looking Peter Sarsgaard as the straight-up mean villain. He won’t erase your memory of Eli Wallach and appears on screen possibly even less than Wallach did, but he steals his every scene nonetheless. Boy could the film have used a lot more of his menace, though.

Otherwise the characters are a bit blah (I had zero interest in Manuel Garcia-Rulfo’s ‘Mexican outlaw doing a good deed for a change’), with the film getting confusing in numbers as to whether the Native-American character played by Martin Sensmeier, token female Haley Bennett, and/or Luke Grimes were among the ‘seven’ or not. I wasn’t kidding at the outset, it really felt like nine, not seven here. I said earlier that they sabotage the Hawke character, and Fuqua and his screenwriters definitely try to use the failings in the Hawke character to shamefully inject some ‘girl power’ into the film, which I found pretty foul to be honest. You’ll see what I mean when you watch the film, if you haven’t already and yes I do think it was done because someone noticed Bennett (who delivers one of the worst final lines to any movie of the last two decades at least) looks a bit like Jennifer Lawrence, making it even more shameful. I did find it interesting that Fuqua has changed the villagers’ ethnicity this time out, as poor Mexicans exploited by one of their own have been replaced by po’ white folk exploited by one of their own. The change doesn’t amount to anything though, as Fuqua doesn’t much care about the people of the town of Rock Ridge enough to give them personalities beyond Bennett and Grimes, arguably.

As for our two leading men, they don’t work out as well as you’d think at first glance. You’d think Denzel Washington would have the right dignified, stoic presence to play the Yul Brynner part (and unlike several of the others here, his black-clad character is pretty close to the one Brynner played), but Denzel’s having an off day here. He’s surprisingly boring and glum, dead weight really. Chris Pratt is better, but mostly because he’s not even trying to play things seriously. No, he’s not really playing the Steve McQueen role, I’m afraid. Instead, aside from some casual racism, it’s Chris Pratt doing Chris Pratt in the old west. That isn’t as successful as you might hope, but he at least has his moments of charm. This time around the fate of the seven has been changed (though the same amount are left alive), but that and the eventually revealed true motive of the Denzel character proved to be not quite to my personal taste. The latter in particular is too modernised for my liking, reminding me of at least a couple of previous Denzel films, one directed by Fuqua himself. The music score by the late James Horner (“Battle Beyond the Stars”, “Aliens”, “Titanic”, “Southpaw”) and his usual music arranger Simon Franglen (putting all of the pieces together after Horner’s sudden passing) is perfectly fine…but it’s just not Elmer Bernstein. In fact, when the familiar Bernstein theme finally comes in over the end credits all I could do was shake my head. It’s the exact wrong place to put such a rousing piece of music. For fuck’s sake, you’re supposed to open with it! The movie’s over now, dipshits.

A limp, lethargic remake that never needed to be done anyway. The 1960 film is practically perfect and this one just doesn’t come close to working, let alone being anywhere near able to touch its originator. Just watch the John Sturges film again instead or perhaps the sci-fi version “Battle Beyond the Stars”.

Rating: C-