I was not a big fan of Western Cowboy movie nowadays. I am not sure since when I lost the interest, coz during my younger age (while I was still in primary school), I totally loved cowboy movies. I even imagined myself as a sheriff, holding guns to capture bad guys. LOL. But when I grew out of such passion, I hardly ever watched any western cowboy movies, not even the famous The Lone Ranger. Anyway, as I saw the trailer of this movie and since it was having few quite famous actors playing in it, I thought I ought to give it a chance to see it. So here we were (I managed to convince my wife to accompany me, even though she was not really in to such genre) watching it yesterday. So what was the story actually? Let's find out, shall we?
Brief Story Line
Rose Creek was a town for mining gold and their peace was interrupted by Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard - Green Lantern, Black Mass, etc) who wanted to take over the gold mines. They killed some of the town folks and demanded them to leave the town in 3 weeks time. He was able to do this as he had the town sheriff in his pocket and also few of his army to scare the town people.
In the neighboring city, Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington - Remember The Titans, The Equalizer and many more) who was a bounty hunter, managed to catch an outlaw and made a good impression on Emma (Haley Bennett - Music and Lyrics, The Equalizer etc) and her friend Teddy (Luke Grimes - American Sniper, Fifty Shades of Grey etc). Both of them were Rose Creek's people who were interested in using Chisolm's service to fend off Bogue people and free Rose Creek. Though Chisolm was earlier not interested, he changed his mind once he heard the bad guys were led by Bogue and also due to Emma was willing to pay with everything she had.
Chisolm enlisted the help from few other people to assist in fighting off Bogue's army. He started off with the help from the gambler Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt - Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World etc), then continue with the Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo - From Dusk Till Dawn TV series), the great sniper Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke - Hamlet, Training Day etc) with his good friend Billy Rocks who was good with knives (Lee Byung Hun - G.I. Joe, Red 2, Terminator Genisys etc), the tracker Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio - Jurassic World, Daredevil TV series etc) and last but not least, the Indian Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier).
The seven of them with Emma & Teddy went back to Rose Creek and had a huge gunfight with the sheriff and Bogue's men. Afterwards, the seven of them encouraged the town people to fight with them against Bogue's men. They reminded that in 7 days time Bogue would return with a much larger army and they have to be ready to fight them. Some were too afraid but the rest who stayed were doing their best to learn how to fight (though the progress was not too encouraging).
So would the town people be ready to fight Bogue and all his army? Could the seven of them be able to teach them how to fight? Would all of them be able to survive the final fight? Find them all in this Western cowboy movie.
End of Brief Story Line
This movie was good in term of action. There was the classic gunfight between fewer people against larger army, the one on one duel, and also the use of explosives. As it also involved Indians, there were also the use of arrows in these fights plus the cool knives throwing. As for the supposed dramatic moments, there were some of them here and there and some minor humor as well. However, there was not a lot of touching moments in this movie. No hard thought twist either, although the story did give a little surprise in the end.
The first 1 hour during the introduction of the Magnificent Seven, I felt the pace was a little bit slow. In fact, I personally think it should have been a little bit faster. This resulted to the gun fights scenes were limited to only once in the middle and another in the big finale. Luckily, the big showdown in the last 40 minutes were totally cool. I loved how that finale was made, as it was great and satisfying. The characters of the 7 persons were actually good. I think this was due to the fact that most of them were portrayed by quite senior & well known actors. The director Antoine Fuqua was also quite famous in directing some good movies such as Oscar winning movie Training Day, the cool action movie The Equalizer and many others.
The special effects were quite decent, while the sound effect was pretty good. But to me, the time spent on introduction was too long and the time spent with the town people too little. It did not create the feeling why the seven of them would be so attached and willing to sacrifice for the lives of those people. I did not have the chance to watch the original 1960 version as well as the 1954 version of Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa, but if I read the story line, those put the emphasis on the relationship of the seven good guys with the people they would help. I think that was the reason why that one made a great classic, but I do no think this one would be.
Anyway, if you are a fan of western cowboy genre, then you can definitely watch this one. There was not a lot of such movies nowadays so the options are pretty limited. If you are not a fan of such genre, you can still enjoy this one as the story was quite universal of good guys helping the oppressed smaller people against a large army of bad guys. The only difference is the background is during the Wild West period. The famous stars playing in this movie could also be a good attraction for people to see, as I believe Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Lee Byung Hun all have their own fanbase.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Note:
As I highlighted above, this movie is a remake of the 1960 movie of the same name. That version had lots of stars who were well known during that time also, such as Yul Brinner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn and few others. And that version was also actually a remake of 1954 classic Japanese movie directed by the famous Akira Kurosawa, titled Seven Samurai. After watching this 2016 version, I am very tempted to watch those 2 movies and hopefully I can write about them and provide my views of the two of them.
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