I JUST spent an hour in a pitch black room, dropping down into a fetal position and sucking my thumb.
You too will feel the same, moaning as you rock yourself bank and forth, after watching the most gaw awful remake of “The Magnificent Seven.”
Directed by Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day”), this dreadful slog of a movie is a rehash of one of the most treasured Hollywood films. Debuting in 1960, the original Magnificent Seven spawned three sequels and set the tone for all American Western films to follow.
“The Magnificent Seven” had it all — a great script — itself cloned from the Japanese film “Seven Samurai” in which two gunslingers (played by the legendary Yul Brynner as Chris and ultra-cool Steve McQueen as Vic) are initially recruited by some luckless Mexican farmers to defend themselves against a ruthless band of thieves and murderers led by Polish actor Eli Wallach.
The Seven also included:
Charles Bronson as Bernardo O’Reilly, the desperate professional; Robert Vaughn as Lee, the veteran; Brad Dexter as Harry Luck, the fortune seeker; James Coburn as Britt, the knife expert; Horst Buchholz as Chico, the young, hot-blooded shootist.
In today’s remake, we again have seven gunslingers with Chris Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) doing his best to spiritually channel Mr. McQueen.
Good luck on that!
The ever steady Denzel Washington (“Glory”) plays Sam Chisolm, a bounty hunter and leader of this new group of seven. The rest of the pack are “C” list actors who no one has ever heard of and probably won’t once this pooch of a film finally limps its way out of the multiplex theaters.
Gone also are the beautiful sweeping vistas of Southern Utah and Zion National Park as well as Elmer Bernstein’s iconic main theme score. Bernstein’s theme for “The Magnificent Seven” represented everything thrilling and exciting about the American West.
Listening to it today, Bernstein’s score continues to move the soul and excite the mind.
In this remake, we are given gangsta funk. How low Hollywood has sunk.
Here is the film’s official synopsis:
“Set in 1870’s after the Civil War, looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen and other desperate residents turn to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington) for help.
Chisolm recruits an eclectic group of gunslingers to take on Bogue and his ruthless henchmen. With a deadly showdown on the horizon, the seven mercenaries soon find themselves fighting for more than just money once the bullets start to fly.”
Oh, joy.
The original premise of “The Magnificent Seven” was based strictly on economics — James Corbun was a down and out of drifter found hanging around a train station, throwing knives around to earn food money. Brad Dexter was seeking fame and fortune in a “hidden silver mine” in Northern Mexico that didn’t exist.
Forget the above PR proclamation about this remake.
Instead lust plays a big part of Pratt’s Josh Farraday, as the new Seven are hired by buxom redhead Cullen (Haley Bennett) who quickly becomes the focus of Pratt’s “romantic” conquest; and the villain, being a “corrupt industrialist” (no snickering please) is played by Peter Sarsgaard who sneers a lot at a lot of white people.
Clearly the Mexican theme of the original has been ripped apart.
Johnny Depp made an equally dreadful remake of the American West in “The Lone Ranger” in 2013 which offended just about every race, religion and culture you can think of. This “Magnificent Seven” does the same but on a lower, more base level where each person coming into the theater is handed a stupid pill and a warm glass of water.
I chose not to swallow mine.
Sucking your thumb and crying in a dark room works better.
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