This The Seven Samurai 3 Stars (out of four)
The Magnificent Seven (1960) 3 Stars (out of four)
The Magnificent Seven (2016) 3 Stars (out of four)
So the remakes continue. The Magnificent Seven, itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is now being remade again in 2016, this time with a politically correct racially diverse cast. However, I like the idea of this new cast as all actually would have had a reason to be in the Old West. With today's tendency toward historical revisionism, this new version promised to be a fun and interesting remake.
The story is pretty much the same. All take off from the same general outline of The Seven Samurai, only the details change. A small, rural farming village is being robbed by a large group of approximately 40 bandits. The village elder tells some of the men to go into town to hire men experienced in fighting and weapons to train and help the villagers defend themselves. The villagers cannot afford to pay the Samurai what they would get for such services, but they promise their defenders all the food they can eat and a pittance. We have a montage of the older warrior who recruits six other men, all with different strengths. One is an old brother-in-arms, another is a killer of the greatest skill, and another is a young man who dreams of becoming a warrior. We find out this young man was a farmer as well and personally identifies with their struggles and hardships. Once the group reaches the village, all the women are missing as the villagers think the warriors will rape them. When those fears are allayed, we get more montages of training and getting ready for the big battle. In the middle of all this, the young warrior falls in love with one of the local girls, much to the dismay of her conservative father. The movie ends with the warriors fighting alongside the villagers in a battle to kill the bandits.
THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)
Before American audiences were watching foreign films regularly, Akira Kurosawa was one of Hollywood's go-to directors to rip off. Some of his movies that have been appropriated include this one, of course, Star Wars uses elements from both The Hidden Fortress and Throne of Blood. His film Yojimbo has been remade at least twice (Last Man Standing and A Fistful of Dollars). All three films are based on Dashiell Hammett's noir novel Red Dust. Even Kurosawa himself was not above stealing as his movie Ran is a remake of Shakespeare's King Lear, only set in feudal Japan. I guess it goes to show that if you're going to steal from somebody, steal from the best.
That said, The Seven Samurai is a wonderful movie, if just a tad overlong. I'm not one with a short attention span, but at close to 3.5 hours, this movie becomes a butt-buster. Even so, it takes its time so that we can get to know and appreciate each character. We know backstories on each Samurai and the villagers who hire them. Different motivations come into play, particularly with longtime Kurosawa-collaborator Toshiro Mifune's character. In this movie, we are introduced to him playing a character that is almost buffoonish in his broad comedic performance. He careens wildly from annoying comic relief to sullen, worldly cynic that is abrasive to all around him except the old Samurai. As we and the other characters get to know him, we see a damaged character underneath that uses bluster to hide his very deep pain at the world. He keeps people at arm's length so they will not hurt him anymore than he has been already. His arc from cynical buffoon to real hero is very satisfying because of this deliberate evolution.
The movie's (very long) climax when the samurai and the townspeople is quite exciting and entertaining. The denouement where four of the Samurai die is quite poignant as we have come to know and like each one of them. The Seven Samurai is one of those movies that just seems right to serve as the archetype of things to come. It is a work of stunning originality on the part of Kurosawa and all his collaborators behind and in front of the camera. Kurosawa is one of those legendary directors because he made great movies time and time again. This is only one of at least six of his movies that are considered classics of the film genre and he is one of the most revered and copied filmmakers of all time. Like Chaplin, Welles, Scorsese, Spielberg, Ford or Hitchcock, he is one of the templates that all aspiring filmmakers should study.
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960)
After Kurosawa saw The Magnificent Seven for the first time, he said, "It's a wonderful movie, but it's my movie," and shortly after began legal proceedings because no one had secured the rights for remaking his picture. Once it was released, The Magnificent Seven became a classic of western action. If there was ever a movie that benefited from trimming the run time, this is definitely it. At just over two hours, this movie steams along at a great pace and never really slows down. Even at the slower points, and there are a couple, the movie is brisk with very little filler. The movie is similar in its plot, except this time it takes place in Mexico and a local ground of bandidos is terrorizing and robbing a small farming village.
My two biggest complaints of the movie are fairly minor. The biggest one was the casting of Yul Brynner. Although he is great in just about everything he ever did, the choice to cast him in the lead role is a bit off for this film. When I was younger, I hated it, but as I got to appreciate Brynner's presence, I warmed up to it. But it still rings wrong in this cast and I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I don't buy him as the lone outlaw with the Clint Eastwood attitude. My second complaint is a pet peeve of mine. The western genre at this time tended to be the springboard for a lot of young actors to make their mark, and producers wanted to showcase them, sometimes at the expense of the real talent we were coming to see. The most egregious example is Rio Bravo. As good as the movie is, we came to see John Wayne. Dean Martin is badly miscast and bringing in Ricky Nelson was a disaster. They even shoehorn in a song so Martin and Nelson can sing together. The offending character in The Magnificent Seven is Horst Buchholtz who plays Chico, the young man with the background of being from a similar village, a combination of two characters from The Seven Samurai. This is the critical part of the movie, but again, it feels as if they wanted to make Buchholtz the star (instead of the other soon-to-be-superstars in the stellar cast including Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Eli Wallach, Robert Vaughn and James Coburn). I am not saying this is Buchholtz's fault, his performance is fine. It's just a little too pronounced in an otherwise stellar, soon to be immortal cast of Hollywood action heroes for the next two decades.
In the end, The Magnificent Seven is a fine movie with a great ending, but in my opinion, falls just short of greatness. But a movie I would heartily recommend to anyone for a wild ride of rip roaring fun.
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (2016)
I have held that movies are definitely a reflection of the times they are made. A movie like this one or King Arthur, Robin Hood, or Ben Hur, a story told over and over again in different generations gives a fascinating glance into how people perceive reality and their biases toward each other and their environments. Movies, being a product of popular culture, have to conform to these cultural norms in order to be embraced. For instance, D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation is roundly and rightly considered a cinematic classic in that it set up the modern method of cinematic storytelling structure, but it is also incredibly racist in its attitudes toward black people in general with its favorable portrayal of the KKK as the saviors of the post-Civil War Reconstruction South. The movie was embraced as a blockbuster, but is roundly reviled today in its attitudes. Westerns from the 30s through the early 60s portrayed a boyhood fantasy of what the Old West was like with bloodless gunfights and virtuous whores. Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name spaghetti Westerns with Sergio Leone signified the end of the innocent Western of John Wayne and a more nihilistic Old West as a cruel, dehumanizing landscape that culminated in Eastwood's visionary anti-Western, Unforgiven. A movie that in one brilliant turn shreded every cherished trope and legend of the Old West. It could only have been done by Eastwood or Wayne, the two men most directly responsible for establishing these legends to begin with.
So why am I bringing all of this up? First to show that stories are continually adapted to meet cultural sensitivities. Also to illustrate that in a post-Unforgiven cultural landscape, we are left with a more jaundiced eye toward the portrayal of our past. In the case of the upcoming Guy Pierce's version of the King Arthur story, you have a man not born into nobility as Arthur was, but rather a street kid who ascends to the throne, a very modern type of hero. In the case of Westerns, there is a dual track of striving for historical authenticity combined with modern inclusion of as many new characters as possible, not matter how shoehorned they appear to be. Movies like Posse and The Quick and the Dead are the most egregious examples. This new version of The Magnificent Seven strikes a good compromise between the two. In a modern all-racial-inclusive cast, this movie works on all levels. No one out of place here. All the cast members have compelling reasons to be in the story, but the overall themes of justice and redemption are still in place.
In this case, the action takes place in the Wyoming territory, where an unscrupulous land baron is now trying to take the land from settlers to make way for a railroad line to his mines. He is the thoroughly modern Occupy Wall Street/Mr. Robot villain, a totally amoral rich guy that will take everything from poor people unless there is a revolution of the proletariat of sorts. No matter, the movie is great and all performances are fun to watch. I particularly like Chris Pratt, who is fast becoming the next superstar movie actor. He is very affable and comes across as a very sympathetic character, and one actor I am excited to see what he will do next. The finale is very kinetic and fun, and propels this film into a better than average action flick. A fun recommendation when you just want to turn your brain off and go with the flow.
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