GALA D: Antoine Fuqua. USA. 133 min. Sep 8, 6:30 pm, Princess Of Wales Sep 8, 8 pm, Roy Thomson Hall Sep 9, 1 pm, Roy Thomson Hall Sep 10, 2:30 pm, Scotiabank 12. 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 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. They know what kind of movie this is and what the audience wants, and it’s a pleasure to watch 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 insist on telegraphing it quite so insistently.
But when Pratt does his charming-rogue thing, or D’Onofrio’s eccentricity reinvents a clichéd line, or James Horner and Simon Franglen filter Elmer Bernstein’s classic score through a military drumline? Oh, that’s the stuff we go to the movies for.
