The Magnificent Seven stars The Equalizer, aka Denzel Washington, and Marvel’s Star Lord, aka Chris Pratt, and is a remake of a 1960 film, which I’ve never seen, which is a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, which I definitely saw, but my memory is fading because so many movies copy Kurosawa so it is hard to hold on. Antoine Fuqua directed this iteration, and Fuqua is either hit or miss, but this movie was a miss.
If I’m having problems remembering Seven Samurai, and it is a masterpiece, then The Magnificent Seven evaporated almost immediately as I was watching it. It actually took me two attempts to watch this movie at home. I’m so happy that I wasn’t tempted to see it in theaters because I had no idea that Fuqua directed it, and it was playing in my favorite theater that serves real butter popcorn so there was a real possibility that I could have paid to see this movie. It is possible that I knew that Fuqua directed it, but ran the other way because I didn’t enjoy Southpaw. I thought that cynical summer blockbuster formula would at least make it entertaining for a home viewing, but sadly it felt like a chore to watch. I ended up relegating it to the kind of movie that I multitask to so that I could get through it, and eventually I did.
The good news about The Magnificent Seven is that the cast is excellent. I already mentioned Washington and Pratt, but it also included such acting titans as Ethan Hawke, Peter Sarsgaard and Vincent D’Onofrio. Then the casting director made a healthy nod towards diversity by casting Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Jonathan Joss and Martin Sensmeier. Unfortunately no one cares about diversity if the movie isn’t good, and it wasn’t. If you’re going to watch this movie because of D’Onofrio or Hawke, don’t bother. They are completely wasted in this film. I hope that they got a hefty paycheck. While Pratt is affable and talented, I felt disappointed by his character. He also always plays the same person, which works when he gets to empathize his physical humor, but doesn’t when he isn’t forced to rely on it. There is no real chemistry among the ragtag group so their individual charms never coalesce into a Voltron charming ensemble. They still feel like disparate parts.
Maybe my problem is that if you set The Magnificent Seven in the United States of America soon after the Civil War, I’m waiting for racism or for some level of historical accuracy toned down for the masses. So I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it never comes—not even from the villain! I’m not saying that I need an explanation why a Confederate soldier would work with a black man or be best buds with a Korean man, but if Quentin Tarantino could provide me with a plausible explanation for the prior in The Hateful Eight, then it couldn’t hurt. I’m not questioning why a Korean man is in the Wild West. I’m questioning the existence of a progressive Confederate vet. Let’s say that they’re not historically (*ahem* currently) known for their open mindedness when it comes to diversity. Come on! What is this, a Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice Roberts? We’re not post-racial!
I’m not going to blame Fuqua for The Magnificent Seven failing to reimagine the Western for the twenty-first century. I thought that he did a superb job exploring the Arthurian legends in King Arthur. I suspect that Fuqua is only as good as his writing team because his casts are usually phenomenal. So before you see a Fuqua film, look at who wrote the story and see whether or not you liked that writer’s work before. If you didn’t, run!
Also if we’re going to be post-racial, then let’s go all the way with unrealistic depictions of women kicking ass in The Magnificent Seven so I can walk away with a little bit of satisfaction. Nope! We get a Smurfette, i.e. one lead woman character, and she is out for vengeance, but she is epically disappointing! Spoiler alert, she spends the whole movie wanting to be included in the showdown because it is personal for her, and chick ran out of bullets. I would rather that there were no women characters than a woman character written like her (no disrespect to Haley Bennett, whom I have neutral feelings about and had a thankless job).
Because I watch a lot of movies and television shows, I noticed that occasionally the story will only allow a woman to fight a woman or a person from a specific minority group to only fight another person from the same demographic. I don’t mind it if it seems like a good match up-for instance, two women who have kicked every ass then face off at the denouement is fine. Unfortunately The Magnificent Seven has a young, fit Native American man who squares off against a more mature, realistic body image Native American man. Are you kidding me? This fight is not fair, lame and completely unrealistic. I understand that people care about optics, and you don’t want to inadvertently look like you’re creating a hate crime or promoting violence against woman, but if you’re making an action movie, I expect some damn action, and this particular showdown was dumb.
The villain was the best part of The Magnificent Seven. The writers definitely wrestled with the problematic nature of our country to this day. Specifically how people equate God with capitalism and capitalism as a fundamental tenet of our Republic, not something that alarmed most of our (slaveholding) founder fathers as the seeds of tyranny. Unfortunately this theme is largely dropped after the memorable beginning, and instead of using it to add texture to the rest of the film, the writers seemed to get scared about exploring anything possibly controversial and ran screaming the other way. Sarsgaard’s entrance sets the tone perfectly, and he works as if he is in a good movie, but no one had the heart to tell him that he could phone it in because the movie just fumbles the rest.
The Magnificent Seven was not only disappointing, it was a complete waste of time and resources. Only Washington and Sarsgaard fans should give it a chance, but I’m hoping that the length of the movie will dissuade you: one hundred thirty-three minutes. It should have been a hot ninety minutes, but it drags on without any benefit of character development, interesting interchanges, exciting action or at least a solid story. It isn’t a bad movie, but even a gleefully bad movie would be better than this paint by numbers action summer movie. Underwhelming and forgettable! Skip it! I no longer even feel like checking out the first American remake starring Yul Brenner.