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'The Magnificent Seven': They Ride Again
By Michael S. Goldberger, iBerkshires Film Critic
01:48PM / Thursday, September 29, 2016
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A new crew of gunslingers led by Denzel Washington rides to the rescue in this updated 'The Magnificent Seven.'

Hombres and women folk hankerin' for a good old-fashioned horse opera with just a touch of newfangled sensibilities might want to mosey on over to a movie theater showing director Antoine Fuqua's remake of "The Magnificent Seven."

It's a rip-roaring homage to John Sturges' 1960 version, the one starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, which, you'll recall, was actually a cowboy variation on Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954). The gist of the morality play about emancipation from tyranny remains entertainingly intact.

Point of disclosure: In my case, seeing the movie with Hesh, my friend since childhood, arguably added about half a popcorn to the rating. There we were again, Saturday matinee, popcorn and soda, desperados traversing picturesque valleys, mountains and mesas, guns-a-blazing, all in the glorious pursuit of freeing us from the bad guys and making this a better world. Sure, some things could have been a bit more nuanced, but what's a movie flaw or two among friends? Besides, the stuff that conjures your empathy and gets your blood rushing is all there.

Wisely, there isn't an attempt to duplicate per se the sundry gunslingers, saddle tramps and bounty hunters who comprised the original seven. Instead, screenwriters Nic Pizzolatto and Richard Wenk, with astute tweaking from central casting, substitute a suitably enamoring lineup of classic types sure to please today's cowpoke. Denzel Washington as Sam Chisolm, a bounty hunter who prefers to be known as a "duly sworn warrant officer from Wichita, Kansas," is the head honcho, essentially the role Brynner played.

Commanding center stage with his usual, take charge aplomb, Washington's champion alternates between glib and dead serious. Rounding up the motley crew that will ultimately ride in defense of Rose Creek's beleaguered farmers and townsfolk, he chides his picaresque recruits with the impossibility of their mission: the meager financial reward, and the certainty that they'll all be killed. After all, the odds are daunting. Peter Sarsgaard's Bartholomew Bogue, a mining mogul, doubtlessly practices his out-of-control capitalism just so he can persecute people.

He is a sadist of the most degenerate variety, a poster child for the advocacy of abstinence. The writers don't bother to inject even the slightest contradiction to his wickedness. Practically every ne'er-do-well in the Old West calls him boss. That is, all except the title gang who, for various motivations of their own, decide to take on this daunting challenge. Though all the volunteers arrive with a sullied history, we nonetheless imbue them with the grace we sense they seek.

That makes things tough if you're a bit of a softie like me. You get to like this ragtag assortment of "good killers," and well, you know the actuarial inevitability. Staunch realists will deal with it by placing bets with themselves as to who among these adventurers will ride off into the sunset.  

Replacing the oppressed Mexicans of the original issue are the equally oppressed Americans of Rose Creek. After gunning down whosoever dares criticize his dominion, bad guy Bogue offers each family an insultingly paltry sum for their homesteads. Most are ready to snivelly accept. But whoa, hold on pardner, says Emma Cullen, who recently saw her husband murdered in cold blood by the varmint. She entreats her fellow sodbusters to fight back, by cracky. Well played by Haley Bennett, she is your standard Jean d'Arc of the Old West, and a real pistol at that.

Petitioning Chisolm to take on the cause, the courageous spitfire says she seeks righteousness, but will take revenge. Ooh, we're convinced, and in time, her example serves as inspiration to the diverse assortment of hired avengers, each slotting into one of the remaining six spots nicely. There's a favorite for every buckaroo. While it's a given that the stolid Sam Chisolm must remain somewhat of an enigma, his disciples are more readable.

Josh Faraday is the tacitly acknowledged second fiddle, a hard-drinking gambler played by Chris Pratt who, we'd like to think, would've attained finer things were it not for some past twist of fate. Contending for most problematic among the group, and apparently sharing a past with Chisolm, is Ethan Hawke's novel etch of the humorously eloquent Goodnight Robicheaux, a former Confederate officer of illustrious repute. Rounding out the top rung, Vincent D'Onofrio's bear-sized Jack Horne is as weirdly polite an Indian fighter/mountain man as you're apt to meet.

Byung-hun Lee as Billy Rocks, the knife-thrower extraordinaire who pals with Robicheaux, also stirs the vicarious hero in us, as does Martin Sensmeier playing Red Harvest, a Native American whose chief said he "seeks a different path." Manuel Garcia-Rulfo's outlaw, Vasquez, completes the multicultural assemblage. Add them all up, toss in a passel of derring-do with lots of killing, and you have perhaps not a magnificent, but a nonetheless dang "Pretty Good Seven," especially if you see it with your sidekick.

"The Magnificent Seven," rated PG-13, is a Columbia Pictures release directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Haley Bennett. Running time: 133 minutes
 

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