THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (Antoine Fuqua). Some subtitles. 133 minutes. Opens Friday (September 23). See listing. Rating: NNN
No, the world doesn’t need a remake of The Magnificent Seven, but if studios are going to continue harvesting their back catalogues for comfort food, there are certainly worse results than Antoine Fuqua’s cheerful all-star reworking of John Sturges’s 1960 western, which was itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.
It’s awfully pleasant to watch Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio and Ethan Hawke (among others) saddle up and ride out against an evil coal baron (Peter Sarsgaard) who’s trying to drive some settlers off their land. The actors know what kind of movie this is and what the audience wants, and it’s fun to see them bounce their characters off one another in the movie’s long midsection.
The PG-13 rating keeps Fuqua’s more sadistic impulses in check – until a climax that becomes almost monotonous in its set-’em-up, shoot-’em-down treatment of stunt players. There’s also a little thing involving Washington’s history with Sarsgaard that would have landed a lot harder if Washington didn’t telegraph it quite so insistently.
But when Pratt does his charming-rogue thing, or D’Onofrio’s eccentricity reinvents a cliched line, or James Horner and Simon Franglen filter Elmer Bernstein’s classic score through a military drum line? Oh, that’s the stuff we go to the movies for.
