(Director John Sturges would make a Steve McQueen adventure out of an even grimmer story three years later with The Great Escape.) The new Magnificent Seven is the worst of both worlds: Completely substance-free, yet heavier than Vincent D'Onofrio's beard. The trick of the 1960 version is that it carries itself lightly, despite the near-suicidal mission of seven men beating back wave after wave of armed bandits.
Before then, the musical quotes mostly come out in dribs and drabs, all to emphasize the glum seriousness of seven mercenaries inspired to band together to defend a rural village under siege. The score for the new Magnificent Seven, by the late James Horner and Simon Franglen, quotes Bernstein extensively, but it's a sign of the film's joylessness that it doesn't go full Bernstein until the closing credits, when the Aaron Copland-esque percussion and strings finally come alive. With the town of Rose Creek under the deadly control of industrialist Bartholomew Bogue, the desperate townspeople employ protection from seven outlaws, bounty. While sneakily moving in its themes of honor and protecting the downtrodden, The Magnificent Seven is mostly a cheerful bowdlerization of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, as robust as Elmer Bernstein's unforgettable cattle driver of a score.
The magnificent seven movie#
It's the movie you watched on a Sunday afternoon with your dad, a rip-snorting Western with a simple story, an abundance of quick-drawn pistols and blazing rifles, and a cast of stone-chiseled icons like Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn. Though time has given it the glistening sheen of a Hollywood classic-including a spot in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress, American cinema's de facto Hall of Fame-the original 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven was never meant to be revered.
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