In general, I’m not a fan of the endless stream of Hollywood remakes of classic films. However, there are exceptions. The original MAGNIFICENT SEVEN was itself a remake of SEVEN SAMURAI, so it is a little hard to be precious about not doing it again. Also, there are so few Westerns these days, I’ll take any excuse to get a new one. The original was made in 1960, and there have been so many changes to our society and to filmmaking in that time that there’s plenty of room for a new take on the source material. And this film will never replace the original. We get both.
The good news is that the new MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is the best kind of remake. It takes the ideas from the original, but is not trying to simply reproduce it shot-for-shot. And it adds themes and characters more relevant for modern times. We still have seven gunslingers trying to defend a village. But here the bad guy is a robber-baron (Peter Sarsgaard) whose goons control a mining town. A rich guy plundering resources and sticking it to the poor people working for him is an appropriate villain for the times we live in.
The other big change here is the characters. They all have different names than in the original, though there are some similarities. For the seven we have (1) Chisolm (Denzel Washington), a former Union soldier, law officer, and bounty hunter; (2) Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt), a magic-loving gambler; (3) Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), a former confederate sharpshooter; (4) Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), the outlaw best friend of Robicheaux, and master of bladed weapons; (5) Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Mexican fugitive; (6) Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), a Comanche outcast; and (7) Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio) a trapper and former scalper of Native Americans. We also get a bonus character, Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), who recruits the seven to avenge her husband’s death, and isn’t content to just sit on the sidelines.
As you can see, the cast here is more diverse than the original. Cynics may say that this is just Hollywood's new obsession with multiculturalism. But what’s wrong with that? The actual West did have all these kinds of people in it. The overwhelming white maleness of the 1960 film said more about the state of Hollywood then than it did about the actual West. And besides, if this movie expands the fan base of Westerns, that’s great. Antoine Fuqua is directing this version, and I find it refreshing to see a black director’s take on the Western. Maybe this film will bring some new blood to fans of the genre and in the future we’ll get more Westerns by women, Native Americans, and Asians. I just hope we don’t have to wait 50 years for it.
Ok, it is one thing to say that I’m onboard with the approach here. It is another to say they pulled it off. About that, I have mixed feelings. The truth is, I love Westerns so much that I have a low bar, and this film was well above what it takes for me to enjoy a movie. Is it better than the original? Is it up there with the all time great Westerns? Hell no, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun.
This isn’t trying to reinvent the Western — they march through plenty of the familiar tropes. But at least they do it with enough affection that it is clearly a homage to the classics. One of the joys here is just seeing some top actors today work together in a Western. Denzel Washington is channeling pure classic Denzel, but as a cowboy it's just new enough to be interesting. And Chris Pratt brings the same charismatic tightrope walk between cocksure adventurer and vulnerable loner that he did to GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. Vincent D’Onofrio is hilarious every time he opens his mouth as a half-crazed trapper. But my favorite performance is Ethan Hawke, who seems just born to be in a Western. The other three don’t have as fully developed characters, or are maybe better described as straight men, though they all have their moments. When MAGNIFICENT SEVEN works, it is because of the bickering of the principals. We’ve got a Native American vs. a killer of them, outlaw vs. law officer, and Confederate vs. Union soldiers. The screenplay by Fuqua veteran Richard Wenk and TRUE DETECTIVE creator Nic Pizzolatto mines these opposites for just enough tension to keep things interesting, but not enough to spoil the fun.
If there is one off-kilter thing many will find about this MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, it is that it seems like a happy go-lucky rollicking old-school Western at the beginning, before taking a dark turn into a Sam Peckinpah-esque orgy of violence. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that necessarily, and in fact I kind of like it. The stakes are high here, and the film doesn’t sweep under the rug that people are going to die. The extraordinary amount of death isn’t simply dispensed with because a few of your favorite heroes might have survived.
In all the film lacks a certain amount of iconic moments that would be necessary to launch it into the pantheon of the greats. And we’ve seen most of this before, even if we haven’t seen the components assembled exactly in this way. Still, seeing Fuqua’s take on a modern Western with top talent reeling off sharp dialog on top of perfectly executed stunts is a glorious thing. I might not feel the need to revisit this film in a decade, but for the two hours I was watching it, you could count me as a fan. That’s good enough for me.
