Movie Review - The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven (**, if you’ve seen the original; @ 3-4, for those less fortunate) (PG-13) Why re-tool a classic? It’s almost impossible to duplicate, much less top, the progenitor. More likely, one might attract new fans from a later generation. This one misfires on a couple of key fronts. Badly.

Casting - The 1960 original gave us Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn among the good guys, and Eli Wallach as the head of the plundering gang a village of poor Mexican farmers hired them to defeat. That’s a lot of legends for any oater. This one has Denzel Washington gathering a septet comprised of Ethan Hawke, Chris Pratt (a/k/a Mr. Anna Faris) and a handful of formulaic types. Individual characters, warts and all, were fully developed in the first. We never learn much about this new set of heroes... or feel that we’re missing much from whatever their backstories may have been. We still get the promised “Seven”, but they’re waaaaay short on the “Magnificent” half of the title.

Music - Though I rarely dwell on this element, Elmer Bernstein’s Oscar-nominated theme song and score surely rank among the all-time best for Westerns, and perhaps for all genres. So the moment this one opened with a new, absolutely UN-exceptional score by two other guys, I was severely annoyed.. They eventually played the main theme of Bernstein’s masterpiece during the closing credits, keeping me seated a couple of minutes longer than I’d planned. Too little, too late. Since they already had the rights to that glorious music, why not use it from the get-go? That could have upgraded the entire movie from the tenor set by its plodding pace and bar-code dialog that’s almost as arid as the desert in which the tale unfolds. Perhaps they could have spent those fees on re-writes and/or hiring more charismatic members of the heroic heptad.

There are a few upsides, most notably in the realm of political correctness. It’s not a bunch of Gringos saving hapless Mexican peasants from a nastier version of the Frito Bandito. This time it’s an American Robber Baron (Peter Saarsgard) ravaging an American farming community with the pollution from his gold mine and the bullying of his henchmen. The eponymous Seven include a Latino, a Native American, and an Asian, in addition to their Black leader. Diversity, plus the obvious analogs to today’s economic and environmental environments, count as upgrades in this update.

And, in fairness, the climactic battle is big, loud and bloody enough to almost justify the wait. Apart from those pluses, one is far better off watching Brynner’s bunch on a large HDTV screen - especially with a sound system that lets Bernstein’s music resonate. And McQueen. And Coburn. And Bronson. (9/23/16)