The Magnificent Seven (1960)
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The Magnificent Seven Movie Review
The Magnificent Seven is a 1960 western film directed by John Sturges and starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen among others. It’s an overrated movie.
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“The old man was right.
Only the farmers won.
We lost. We always lose“
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Chris Adams, an experienced gunslinger, forms a team with six other men in order to save a Mexican village from a group of bandits led by Calvera. However, each of the seven men have their own plan. This movie was based on ‘Seven Samurai’, which is a renowned Akira Kurosawa action movie with samurais. This one takes the same premise, but puts it in the American western genre. It was a good idea, but I simply did not care.
Which was to be expected honestly as I really do not care for the original either. Unlike most, I was a bit bored by that movie and I find it quite inferior to other, much more superior and more intelligent Kurosawa outings. It was just the case of overlong, sprawling action spectacle with not much else to it.
The Magnificent Seven is pretty much the same case, though thankfully the runtime is reduced significantly this time around. The movie lasts for only about two hours. However, there lies a problem. For such a regular-running movie, I was bored by it way too many times, making this movie not only slow paced, but also frequently uneventful and stalling. The pacing is quite mediocre throughout its runtime.
As for the story, it’s okay, but again far from sophisticated. It’s serviceable enough and that’s pretty much all I can say about it. I actually liked that ending a lot with the famous quote about them always going to lose being so memorable. The entire ending is quite moving and powerful, and I wish the rest of the flick held that same level of emotional resonance.
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As for the Mexicans, they did get their positive characters thankfully. And they couldn’t have arrived soon enough as I was beginning to wonder if the movie would turn out to be all racist. It’s not great, the end product, but overall it could have been worse.
Let’s talk about the characters. Again, as is the case with most of these team movies so to say, the individual characterizations really suffer in comparison to the group dynamic, which is stellar for sure. But as characters on their own, each and every one of these people was sorely underdeveloped and quite forgettable when all is said and done.
In terms of the performances, each and every actor was pretty good in their respective roles. Again, they did not get that great material to begin with, so they really could not stretch their acting muscles particularly significantly, but still they are all fine. It’s always great seeing Yul Brynner in a genre picture and he’s excellent here, being easily the standout of the entire team. Of the others, McQueen and Bronson are the most memorable ones, but all the others are solid themselves. Eli Wallach is particularly memorable as the leader of these Mexican bandits.
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The Magnificent Seven is technically stupendous. The best reason to see this movie is for its audio-visuals. The score is simply fantastic, instantly iconic and very cool. The cinematography is excellent, the costumes are great, the production design is splendid and the attention to detail in recreating its time period is evident. I just wish the direction and the script were better.
