Denzel Washington stars in a new big budget version of the classic Western "The Magnificent Seven." Time Warner Cable News' Neil Rosen filed the following review.
Directed by Antoine Fuqua, this is a remake of the 1960 John Sturges film, which itself was a reworking of the classic 1954 Akira Kurosawa movie "Seven Samurai."
Denzel leads a diverse group of seven gunman, most of them outlaws, including Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke, to defend a mining town in the old West from a ruthless industrialist who'll stop at nothing to take over the place.
The movie looks good, but the original with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen had more charm and sucked you in more. Fuqua sticks to the basic formula, but his emphasis is more on hollow, wall-to-wall action than on character development.
In the 1960 film as well as Kurosawa's version there was a nobility of purpose to these guys defending the town. You never really get that here. You see it, they say it, but you don't feel it.
The cast, especially Denzel, who's always great, is fun to watch, So is Pratt. But Vincent D'Onofrio's old mountain man is just bizarre. Plus, their eagerness to join this vigilante crew is never fully fleshed out.
Peter Saarsgard is the bad guy here as evil incarnate, but he goes a little over the top. The enemy in this film is a greedy capitalist, unlike the Mexican bandits in the 1960 version. Fuqua has decided to take on the hated one percenters of the 1880's and it's an interesting tactic.
The emotion and heart of the movie gets lost in an all the action. But the stars make it kind of entertaining at times, and if all you're looking for is a violent shoot em' up Western with a high body count, it fits the bill.
Neil Rosen’s Big Apple Rating:
Two and a Half Apples