The most recent filmmaker to take on this challenge is Antoine Fuqua with his remake of The Magnificent Seven. In doing this, Fuqua sticks with what's familiar to him. He reunites Training Day costars Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. He's done stories similar to this one, most specifically King Arthur which was also about a motley collection of fighters trying to stand their ground against overwhelming forces. As a result, this is exactly the movie I expected from Fuqua, which isn't necessarily bad. It could've been much, much worse.
[Note: I haven't seen the original Magnificent Seven and it's unfair to place this again Seven Samurai, so don't be expecting a comparison]
The story is pretty basic. Peter Sarsgaard is a robber baron threatening to kill everyone in a small town if they don't leave. Haley Bennett is the widow of a man Sarsgaard kills. She hires Denzel Washington, a roaming lawman, who agrees to assemble a team of seven men to defend the small town.
The titular seven are well cast. Washington is the laconic hero: a role he has played more times than I can count, including his last film with Fuqua - The Equalizer. He gives the character depth just by taking the role. That's useful for a movie that needs to do a lot of character development in a finite time. Chris Pratt fits in pretty naturally. He reminded me a lot of what Brad Pitt is to George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven: clearly second in command and not taking it all that seriously. Ethan Hawke is a gunshy Cajun. Vincent D'Onofrio is a bear of a man. Byung-hun Lee is a Chinese man with an affinity for knives. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is a fugitive Mexican. Martin Sensmeier is a Native American who knows "some English". They are archetypes and lean heavily on that. There's just not enough time to define them otherwise. Bennett also gets short-changed as a character. Thankfully, they don't force her into a love story, although if the movie was a half hour longer, it would certainly be there. Sarsgaard is a mustache-twirling non-character. He exists as plot device and little else. Simply put, this is not a movie for rich characterization. If all you need is for the seven to crack some jokes with one another and kick ass when needed, this is perfect for you. If you expect more depth than that, sorry. That's not the movie that anyone was making. There's actually an attempt to build up Washington and Sarsgaard's relationship/history toward the very end that's so comically misplaced that it would've been better to drop it entirely.
I expected the character issues going in. That's almost in the DNA of the movie. What bothered me is that I was bored by the climactic showdown. It was impersonal and often hard to track. The geography of the fight and the town isn't laid out well enough to track what's happening. Beyond digging some bunkers and shooting from the tops of buildings, it was hard to pick up on anything strategic that was being done. They hint at setting up a series of road blocks for the enemy horses, but the riders on those horses are killed so quickly regardless that I don't see the point of it. All seven gunslingers have perfect vision and aim. None of the villains have a personality. Sarsgaard's "strategy" makes no sense either. The shootout is exciting but empty of emotion or personal stakes. I expected more, since that sequence is the whole reason the movie exists.
I don't do grade ratings of movies in these Reactions. I'm not against them. I think they can be informative. I just didn't do it when I started and it stuck. If I did ratings though, The Magnificent Seven would be a solid B-. Not all B-'s are built equally though. Sometimes, it's a reflection of doing some really good things with some really bad things that cancel each other out. Other times, it's the result of doing all things competently without making any huge missteps or taking any risks. This film is the latter case. Most of the character development is done in the casting. Thankfully, a good cast was assembled. Antoine Fuqua knows what he's doing as a director but isn't inspired to move out of his comfort zone anywhere. It's pretty generic. This could just as easily be called Young Guns: The Next Generation or American Outlaws 2. That's either going to bother you or it won't. I liked it well enough, although I can't imagine ever seeing it again.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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