Everyone knows a story that owes itself to an unexpected team up, from superhero team-ups in comic books, to ‘The Avengers’ in film, to buddy cop movies and the like. All of them owe a thank you to ‘Seven Samurai’ and it’s Western genre remake, the original ‘The Magnificent Seven’.
In our current world of remakes, reboots and updates, it was only a matter of time that the original Western would be updated with current actors and retold, and that is where 2016’s ‘The Magnificent Seven’ comes to us. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and starring the likes of frequent Fuqua collaborators Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke, along with current in form actors like Chris Pratt, the remake tries to recapture the magic of the original films from the 1960’s.
While endeavouring to develop a film that could do honour to the originals, 2016’s offering falls short of that goal, but not due to anything the film itself does, but just down to the fact that more is expected of films today and a sense that not all stories need to be retold. The film itself is perfectly fine, a nice mix of action and comedy, but is just missing something, an unidentifiable “it” that would have pushed it over the top.
The stars of the film are the two main leads, Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt. Washington brings his usual dramatic gravitas to the film, while Pratt is his equally important comedic foil. Rounding out the great performances from the cast is Haley Bennett as the widow who brings the cause that makes up the film to the main characters.
With the characters being changed and updated both to fit with actual representations of the era and to bring more diversity to the cast in our current day and age, Fuqua provided a great cast to base the story against, and with a quite fitting soundtrack and great wide ranging vistas to use, it is quite difficult to find exactly what the downfall is with ‘The Magnificent Seven’ other than to say that it falls into the trap that befalls most Westerns in this day and age: they just seem too dry.
All in all, 2016’s ‘The Magnificent Seven’ is a good film, just not great, but is definitely worth a viewing for anyone that is a fan of the Western genre in general or a fan of Denzel Washington specifically.
As always, for all this and more, feel free to follow me on Twitter at @kymayer. Cheers for now.
Mayer on Movies 