Antoine Fuqua’s “The Magnificent Seven” is a big, silly
buddy action film set in the old west. A racially diverse crew of mercenaries
takes on a racist, corrupt capitalist that’s keeping an innocent town
hostage. While far from great it manages
to be a fun and ridiculous ‘b’ movie, thanks mostly in part to its cast, which
includes big names like Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke and Chris Pratt.
When I first saw promos for “The Magnificent Seven” I said
to myself: “that film is going to live or die based on the cast” and by and
large I was right. The screenplay by Nic Pizolatto and Richard Wenk is simple
and straightforward, predictable the entire way through and containing a lot of
corny dialogue. A final piece of voiceover narration is a hoot to say the least.
In the opening sequence we’re introduced to the villainous Bartholomew “Bart”
Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard, hamming it up big time) who’s essentially taking over
the town of Rosewood so he can mine it for gold. From there, Emma (Haley
Bennett) and Teddy (Luke Grimes) set off to find help in the form of bounty
hunter Chisolm (Washington).
Then we watch as the rest of the seven are accumulated along
the way. There’s gunslinger/gambler Josh Faraday, (Pratt) former Confederate Sharp Shooter/legend
Goodnight Robicheaux, (Hawke) his friend
and business associate Billy Rocks, (Byung-hun Lee) the outlaw Vasquez (Manuel
Garcia-Rulfo). And finally we have the Comanche warrior Red Harvest (Martin
Sensmeier) and the mountain man Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio. After a few days
of riding the group reaches Rosewood where they have eight days to militarize
the town and fight Bart’s 200-man army.
That’s pretty much it as far as narrative is concerned and
it all unfolds in a very neat and slick manner. There’s an action beat every
five minutes or so with a minimum of five people getting killed, (although thanks
to the PG-13 rating none of those casualties have any blood spewing out of them)
which admittedly can get tedious and repetitive after a while.
Thankfully, the cast makes this thin, action heavy movie
worthwhile. I’m not going to say these are fully dimensional characters that go
through major character arcs but much like in “Star Trek Beyond” the group is charismatic
and entertaining enough that you enjoy spending time with them. And they know
what kind of movie they’re in--meaning they don’t take their roles too seriously. Washington is his usual
confident, calculated tough guy. At this point in his life all he has to do is
show up in a movie and he’s immediately the coolest guy there. Meanwhile, Chris
Pratt is playing his character from “Guardians of the Galaxy” if that character
decided to do a silly (but knowingly silly) impression of a Western gunslinger.
Multiple times he squints his eyes like a junior Clint Eastwood. D’Onofrio may
be the biggest surprise of the film, playing a deranged but unexpectedly sweet
and gentle mountain man and Hawke is amusing as a washed up frontier celebrity.
I do wish Bennett was given more to do; even though it’s basically Emma’s idea
to put the group together there are long stretches of film where she’s absent
without explanation.
It also helps that Fuqua doesn’t seem to be taking “The
Magnificent Seven” very seriously either. The movie is clogged with cheesy
Western clichés; intense staring followed by gun duels, dramatic walking down
dusty streets while pedestrians look on, and lots of gun twirling. All that’s
missing are rogue tumbleweeds. At times it verges on parody; during one scene,
Faraday uses a card trick to get out of being killed by two angry gamblers. After
the melodramatic schmaltz that was “Southpaw” it’s nice to see Fuqua tackle
something so unhinged and campy in tone. However, “Magnificent Seven” runs into
trouble when it slows down and tries to be serious. Material involving
Robicheaux’s post war stress and Chisolm’s secret, deep seeded motive for
taking the job are underdeveloped and feel like they were ripped from a
completely different movie.
There’s little in the way of conflict amongst the group. Outside
of the usual tough guy ribbing they all seem to be fine with one another and
the high-chance-of-death nature of the job. If the group was strictly made up
of white males I think this would be more of a flaw but the fact that the group
is racially diverse makes the lack of conflict oddly refreshing. I mean, we’re
talking about a situation where a white mountain man (whose reputation is based
on killing hundreds of Native Americans) is fighting side by side with a
Comanche warrior with no tension, or an African American bounty hunter who
immediately commands respect when he enters a new town and as the group’s
leader.
While the Seven are aware of their racial differences it’s
never a significant conflict in the narrative. They see each other as equals,
as fellow mercenaries and associates doing a job. Their enemy is Bart, not each
other. And that awareness allows them to be a cohesive, well oiled unit. It’s not
the most thorough examination of race but it’s welcome in an otherwise extremely
goofy action movie.
C+
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