The Magnificent Seven
(Antoine Fuqua)
The biggest fault this remake of a remake does is put the character interactions of the seven to the sideline. Instead it focuses on the spectacle of cool looking gun fights and talent of the cast. The result is mixed bag of emotion and familiarity. Despite a powerful cast, they are not used to the advantage of the film and this remake feels a tad hollow inside.
Bartholomew Bogue has a lot of money, but he wants more. A small town stands in his way of mining for some gold so he decides to send a message by burning town the church and killing some townsfolk. One of those killed was the husband of Emma Cullen, who then goes out to look for skilled gunfighters to defend the town and exact revenge on the ruthless Bogue. She finds seven men.
Fuqua teams up with his
Training Day partners Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke and purposely showcases a happy reunion between the two. Washington is the cool as ice man in black who rides into town looking for trouble. He takes on the request from Jennifer Lawrence look-alike, Haley Bennett and goes on a quick quest to find some gunslingers. First up is Chris Pratt, an alcoholic smart ass who is talented with a pistol, but Washington doesn't know that, he only spoke to him once a few minutes before and Pratt was just sitting down. Without knowing if he's a good shot or not, he's recruited. The two separate way to find more; Washington makes an offer to a Mexican outlaw, played with little to no purpose by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo. Pratt tracks down a legendary sharpshooter and his knife-wielding best friend, played by Hawke and Lee Byung-hun. That's five down, two to go. They track down a bear of a man, Vincent D'Onofrio and randomly take on a Comanche warrior, Martin Sensmeier. Avengers Assembled.
As mentioned before, Fuqua choose style over substance and we get little to no interaction between these men. With the exception of Hawke, no one else really has a character arc here. Even his is shallow and predictable, but at least it's something to work with. On the flip side, D'Onofrio is the only one actually doing something interesting with the character. Everyone else is tasked with looking cool while holding a gun (or a bow & arrow). The film tries to be progressive and adds people of different races into the mix. For example, the seven men are white, black, Mexican, native and Korean.The Commanche warrior at first might seem to be an enemy. If history tells us anything it's always been Cowboys vs Indians. So the inclusion of this native brings questions; how will the team interact with him? Will there be friction and trust issues? Fuqua and writers Nic Pizzolatto &
Richard Wenk don't bother to explore this area. They instead would rather set up a quick lived showdown between Sensmeier and another random Native warrior from the other side. This set up is laughable at how predictable and short sighted it is. Finally we have the underused Peter Sarsgaard as the villain. He looks the part, acts the part, but the part doesn't justify anything. Set up in the first scene as the bad guy, we get one more small bit with him halfway and then he sits around in the final showdown. He needed to be a more menacing figure for our heroes, tragically that is not the case.
You can appreciate films from the 50's 60's and 70's that were in the western genre because of the gorgeous landscape, it feels real. Watching films like this one today makes me question what I'm looking at. Is that really a mountain range in the background, or some CGI creation? That fact that I'm even asking myself the question takes you out of the experience for the film. Then we have scenes with obvious CGI. When will filmmakers realize that CGI smoke and fire, look laughably fake on the screen. Akira Kurosawa who directed the original film this is based on, literally burned an entire set to the ground in Ran. It looks gorgeous on the screen and proved how daring and audacious a filmmaker he was. People today are limited by their own reluctance. They choose CGI over realism. This film doesn't dare to do anything, it follows the norm.
While the cast is indeed good, the film offers nothing new. It fails to live up to its name or full potential.