The Magnificent Seven

Starring: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D'Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett, and Peter Sarsgaard
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
Written by: Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto

     Remakes are funny things.  They can go either way.  On one hand, they can be like last year's Mad Max: Fury Road, a film that critics and audiences adore; a film that will live on as a cinematic masterpiece.  Remakes can also go in the direction of this year's rendition of Ben-Hur, one that critics and audiences will likely forget.
     The Magnificent Seven some might say is an unnecessary remake.  It's a remake of an original that's based on another film, Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic, Seven Samurai, in which seven samurai soldiers are hired by a town to keep them safe from raiding bandits.  This time, there are no raiding bandits, and there are not seven sword-wielding soldiers.  This time, it's a western, seven gunslinging people who don't seem to fit together so well, and a wealthy industrialist trying to take over the town for his mining business.  If this is a plot that screams originality to you, I can assure you it is anything but.
     Sam Chisholm (Denzel Washington) leads this group of three misfits (Chris Pratt, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Ethan Hawke), a Mexican bandit (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an Asian assassin (Byung-hun Lee), and a Native American horseman (Martin Sensmeier) all under the employment of a woman widowed when this industrialist named Bogue comes into town (Haley Bennett and Peter Sarsgaard respectively.  Like many other westerns, Chisholm plays the role of the outsider riding into town to set things right by bringing in the right kind of order.  He's the guy that sticks up for the people of the town and they look to him to save them from whatever strife they have.  In this case, it's a robber baron wanting to steal their land and mine their town for gold.  As I said before, it's not tremendously original, yet one cannot really expect it to be when it is a remake of a classic.
     Antoine Fuqua directs this film seeming to have a clear understanding of the western genre.  The cinematography and location are similar to many other westerns from the past.  With so many films that are action packed such as this one, it feels like filmmakers want audiences to feel like they're a part of the action the whole time (like basically any superhero movie these days).  The cinematography of these fight scenes and shootouts feels different.  There are shootout scenes in this film that make the film a throwback in that sense.  The film also pushes some boundaries of the western genre by diversifying the cast so much while still sticking to a similar plot of the original.
    When films have casts this large, one thing that can happen is a lack of character development and background.  Many of these characters have lives before this story begins.  For example, some of them explain that they fought in the civil war some years before.  It is only touched on.  I would like to know how their experiences make them right for the role they've been given, to defend this town against Bogue.  The details of these characters should be a little more flushed out because from what I've seen in this film, they're not completely interesting people.  They all act in distinctive ways which makes them compelling, but at the same time uninteresting.
    If there are two piles that we can place remakes of films into, good and bad, I would put The Magnificent Seven into the good stack.  It's an entertaining film and thrilling at times.  It has a good cast, a good director, and a good plot.  The film does not "wow" me as a great western however.  In short, this is a fine film, but not quite magnificent.
I give The Magnificent Seven a B.