[Movie review] ‘Seven’ more mediocre than magnificent

Seven warriors fight for the vulnerable, in a formula that bears revisiting in “The Magnificent Seven.” Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece, “Seven Samurai,” begat the classic 1960 Western “The Magnificent Seven,” then a late ’90s TV series and now, a big budget action adventure Western directed by Antoine Fuqua. It’s an appealing concept -- bad guys who can be good, loners who can work together and find camaraderie in a team when it comes to protecting innocents.

With the blockbuster cast that Fuqua has assembled, including Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio and Peter Sarsgaard, as well as stunning cinematography by Mauro Fiore, this Western epic remake should be an easy home run. It’s all there -- except for the writing, and that failure is the Achilles’ heel that never lets this version of “The Magnificent Seven” achieve liftoff.

Written by “True Detective” scribe Nic Pizzolatto alongside “Expendables” and “The Equalizer” writer Richard Wenk, “The Magnificent Seven” is long on violence and short on story, character development, motivation, and all the things that make any kind of violence satisfying to watch. Therefore, despite all the star power, charisma, and dusty heroics on screen, it’s impossible to care about any of it.

The biggest problem is a failure to adequately establish the villain, Bartholomew Bogue. Sarsgaard does his sniveling best with the two scenes he is given to portray Bogue, a tyrannical capitalist who equates democracy with God and the free market, and who has seized the town of Rose Creek for the purposes of gold mining.

In a pre-credits opener, we see just what a baddie he is, tormenting children, shooting up a church, and mowing down innocent citizens, but it’s just not enough to justify the endless violence that the seven return, especially since the townspeople are endangered and killed in the melee themselves.

To top it off, there’s just not enough backstory and character motivation to believe that these seven would put themselves on the line for this tiny town. Spunky Emma (Haley Bennett) retains the services of warrant officer Sam Chisholm (Washington), who has a deep secret memory of Bogue that sparks his interest in the job. The other six he strong arms into joining him, including Faraday (Pratt) and Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). He calls on old pal Goodnight Robicheaux (Hawke) and his associate, Chinese fighter Billy Rocks (Lee Byung-hun), and somehow convinces Comanche warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) and cowboy Santa Claus Jack Horne (D’Onofrio) to join up too. Why any of them participate in the massacre is frankly, a mystery.

The Western genre has always worked as a metaphor -- a fable that allows us to work out our contemporary quandaries through the screen of a period piece. In this “Magnificent Seven,” there’s a celebration of guns that feels both of that era of lawless shootouts, and unfortunately, of this era too.

These gunmen protect citizens entitled to freedom from unfettered capitalism. It’s a politically complicated message, at once conservative and liberal, speaking to both sides. While there might be an intriguing moral wrapped in this violent package, without the human element urging the story forward, the “Magnificent Seven” turns out to be rather insignificant after all.

By Katie Walsh
Tribune News Service

(Distributed by Tribune Content Agency)