Bookshelf Battle

Guns. Horses. A town in trouble. White hats and black hats.

BQB here with a review of The Magnificent Seven.

So yesterday I railed against Hollywood reboots and now I’m going to be a hypocrite and tell you that I really enjoyed this remake of The Magnificent Seven (1960) starring Yul Brynner (dead), Charles Bronson (so dead), Steve McQueen (a badass even in death), Brad Dexter (also dead), James Coburn (totally dead), Horst Buchholz (the German James Dean who, like the American James Dean, is dead,) and Robert Vaughn (still alive, huzzah!)

Admittedly, I never saw the original, so the new version was new to me, which just goes to show that reboots are always new to someone and when the inevitable Back to the Future reboot comes out and some dumb kid asks, “There was an original BTTF?” then I will know my time has run out and it is time for me to dig my own grave, lie down, and wait for the worms to eat me.

But I digress.  The new seven are:

• Denzel Washington as lawman Sam Chisholm
• Chris Pratt as drunken gambler/comic relief Josh Faraday
• Ethan Hawke as the troubled yet smooth talking Goodnight Robicheaux
• Vincent D’Onofrio as grizzly mountain man Jack Horne
• Byung-Hun Lee as knife thrower Billy Rocks
• Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as mysterious Mexican Vasquez
• Martin Sensmeier as Native American warrior Red Harvest

Peter Sarsgaard, who’s built a career on playing epic douches, stars as epic douche/evil businessman Bartholomew Bogue who notifies the townsfolk of Rose Creek that they have three weeks to sell their land to him on the cheap or be killed.

Not willing to roll over for Bogue’s chicanery, Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett, who looks so much like Jennifer Lawrence that movie studios could save a bundle by hiring her instead of J-Law and no one would know but movie nerds like myself) scrapes her life savings together and uses it to hire the seven.

The first half of the film is basically Chisholm wandering the countryside recruiting the seven, during which time we learn about who they are and what they’re capable of and then this all leads to the second half, the ultra violent, action packed showdown.

I loved it. It had all the Western tropes that I love.  The townsfolk want to bend over and take it from Bogue rather than risk incurring his wrath.  Sigh.  Western townsfolk always want to take it from the bad guy rather than cooperate with the good guys. Also, there’s card playing, drunkenness, prostitution, duels, gambling and so on.

I applaud Hollywood for making historical movies at a time when they aren’t doing so well.  Earlier this summer, I enjoyed the Ben-Hur remake (meaning I’m a hypocrite again, though I hadn’t seen the original so it was new to me) but it did not do well at the box office.

I hope this film does well so that Hollywood will be encouraged to keep making historical movies.  In fact, you should go see it to add to the ticket sales.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy.