During the 60’s and 70’s, Hollywood’s love for the western action drama grew poignantly, it was quite evident the pop culture took the world by a storm. No wonder we have seen endless Tamil cinemas with Jaishankar & co clad in a cowboy hat making some strides in Namma Kollywood too. Magnificent Seven was one of the starts of a glorious Wild west milieu and somehow the essence seem to have dropped these days. MS is a remake of the 1960 classic, the act of enacting the magic created earlier has been done desperately, somehow does not live up to its reputation but saved at the end of the day by some top notch performances from Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt.
The plot is essentially the same: Seven outlaws are hired to wipe out the bad guy who wants to destroy their town. In the 1960 version, Brooklyn-born Eli Wallach, using an outrageous Mexican accent, played the sombrero-wearing villain. It’s like this, an old-fashioned town somewhere in California in 1879 is being overrun by the forces of a greedy mining robber baron by the name of Bartholomew Bogue (Sarsgaard). The townspeople are fed up and want to stand up to him, but then Bogue soon repeats his supremacy by killing a number of rebels. As a result, the people from the town embark on to hire a group of mercenaries to defend the town from Bogue. Along the way, they come in contact with a competent bounty hunter, Sam Chisolm (Washington). As soon has he gives the nod, the plot becomes rather too familiar, as he goes on to hire a group of henchmen to complete his mission.
So, Chisolm seeks to assemble his group to take on Bogue and defend the townsfolk. He employs the guns of dangerous gambler, Josh Faraday (Pratt), who has a penchant for cards and magic tricks. The smartass of the group and also the uber cool is definitely Josh, who blows away with his screen presence. Along for the ride are a former Confederate soldier, Goodnight Robicheaux and Robicheaux’s right-hand man, the Chinese knife-thrower Billy Rocks (Lee). Along the way, Chisolm’s band is joined by the mountain man Jack Horn (D’Onofrio), the Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Garcia-Rulfo), and the lone Native American warrior Red Harvest (Sensmeier). Thus, the new Magnificent Seven are born and groomed with a license to kill.
The film lacks a rock solid Villain, the character demands a notorious guy who can drool and at the same time send shivers down the opponents spine, sadly the film lacks it to a great extent. Peter Sarsgaard is a great actor, but he’s nothing as the cynical Bart Bogue. He’s a one-dimensional and boring villain. Agreed, Sarsgaard is a great actor, and you can see him really trying here. The character does have a sort of paranoid unease about him that could’ve been interesting, but the film doesn’t explore that characteristic much at all. At the helm is Denzel Washington who puts characters at ease with his rugged performance, his casual attitude sneaks down well into this characterization and Chris is yet another adorable actor who falls into the category. They both in a nutshell are indeed Magnificent.
Even with more than two hours of screen time, though, character development doesn’t get a seat at the saloon. Everybody’s on a collision course toward the ultra-violent finale, where countless folks are shot, stabbed and blown up. The usual wild west gimmicks are there, so people who love the west would surely have a laugh or two with the saddles, dust, horses and all that. However it’s Fuqua’s ordeal in trying so hard to make the remake look better than the original that gives away to some poor screenplay and scripting.
Verdict: If you are a fan of the west, go for it.
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