A group of seven rag-tag heroes team up to give vengeance to a widowed woman, in “The Magnificent Seven”. Written and directed by critically acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua, the movie begins With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard). The desperate townspeople, led by Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty hunters, gamblers and hired guns; Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), Josh Farraday (Chris Pratt), Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Billy Rocks (Byung-Hun Lee), Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier). As they prepare the town for the violent showdown that they know is coming, these seven mercenaries find themselves fighting for more than the money they seek. “The Magnificent Seven” is rated PG-13 for extended and intense sequences of Western violence, historical smoking, some adult language, and suggestive material.
Antoine Fuqua awards the audience with his most ambitious of projects to date. For anyone who doesn’t know, the story of “The Magnificent Seven” spans decades back to the visionary Akira Kurasawa. Perhaps one of the greatest minds to ever work in film. Over time, this movie has been remade once a generation, and while the story vastly changes over the years, the one thing that remains is the idea of this being a story that centers around revenge and fighting for what you’re trying to preserve. In the newest addition, Fuqua’s helming pays great respect to the generations before him, while instilling a nice blend of modern cinematography and fast paced action to preserve the kind of effect that this inspiring story has garnered over time. This movie was a lot of fun for me. It is the very definition of Summer popcorn flick, but done so in the fall. We usually don’t get big budget blockbusters like this one so late in the year, but as it stands, this movie is an early treat before the trick of October. The story does struggle a little to be “Magnificent”, but that doesn’t make it any less of a good time.
What’s truly amazing about Fuqua and screenwriter Nic Pizzolatto’s work here is that the movie never feels limited by its PG-13 grading. This film goes toe-to-toe with any film you will see this year in terms of violent brutality and adult-like attitude that it so brilliantly displays. I was very surprised to see just how far the envelope was pushed in terms of what the camera shows us, but you will be even more surprised to know that Fuqua’s capabilities behind the camera forces you to fill in the blanks with your own mind for the gaps that are missing in destructive presentation. Fuqua shoots just enough before the next camera angle takes us in another direction, mostly offering wide angle lens shots for some intense gun battles, as well as some really gritty arrow wounds that made me wince on more than one occasion. Simply put, if this is the new PG-13, I am totally on board. I never felt like this movie was ever handicapped in terms of paying tribute to the many great Westerns before it, and it just goes to show that rating means absolutely nothing when you have two of the best young minds today working on a project that centers around the audience investing themselves to the truly magnetic shots.
The shooting backgrounds and set pieces are very authentic to the kinds of Western landscapes that such a story was founded on. If you have an IMAX or XD theater in your area, I recommend that you shell out the extra bucks to see this on such an imposing stage. One of my absolute favorite aspects to any Western is the magnitude of such a scale, and how under-developed everywhere in America looked before the big businesses and greed took over. When you watch a film like this one, your mind really starts to fill in the gaps of the winning side in war being the storytellers for future generations, and it adds an already bigger ante to the pot that was already boiling big. Cap it off by a mesmerizing score by the great James Horner, and you have the perfect 1-2 punch to really transport you to a time of great consequence.
The performances offer some hits and misfires with their sharing time. Unfortunately, with any ensemble movie, there are going to be some roles and characters that get severely overshadowed, and that’s the case here with a few of the protagonists in this rebellious group. One of the big problems that I had with this movie was the glaring holes in storytelling and character exposition as the movie went on. With a few exceptions like Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, and Haley Bennett’s characters, Pizzolatto feels satisfied in cropping these men in their stereotypical shackles. There are some hints at possibly a more in-depth detail to Chris Pratt’s character struggling with alcohol abuse, but it never materializes into something more, and any scene leading up to it just feels like more dust kicked up into the wind. This is also the case with the antagonist of the movie (Played by the great Peter Saarsgaard) struggling to ever make an impact that equals that of the immense shawdow cast by his opponents in protagonists. He just kind of disappears and fades into the background, and the movie continues on without his participation. He is even given the opening ten minutes of the movie to make the biggest impact, but there’s no rhyme or reason to what makes him such a deadly and vicious adversary. The trio of actors that I mentioned before are the real shining stars here, and thankfully their meaningful performances gives way to characters who you can get behind. Washington is still one of those big time presences in film, and his role as Chisolm seems destined for the gun-toting justice of the wild west. Hawke’s backstory feels the most satisfying in terms of what we learn about his tortured past. Ethan plays this brilliantly as someone who feels confined, as well as scarred by war and how it’s shaped him to be the person he has become. Far and away though, Haley Bennett was my favorite character in this movie. You really notice quite the transformation for Bennett’s character over the course of two hours with her, and it’s nice to see a woman stand out in a male dominated cast. The eyes of revenge are seen through her character mostly, so Bennett serves as a deserving narrator of sorts for the vicious direction this movie is headed.
“The Magnificent Seven” packs a devastating blow, crafting one of the more enjoyable experiences with an overexposed genre, in years. It’s a film that doesn’t feel cuffed by the cliches of the typical remake, instead opting for tightly choreographed battle scenes and brutality that re-define the limitations by such a rating. Some storytelling problems, yes. But this western deserves your full attention, and it will earn it one shot at a time.
7/10