Director:Â Antoine Fuqua
Cast:Â Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-Hun Lee, Peter Sarsgaard, Haley Bennett, Matt Bomer, Luke Grimes, Sean Bridgers, Billy Slaughter, Cam Gigandet, Vinnie Jones
Rating:Â 12A
Running Time:Â 133 mins
Release Date:Â September 23rd, 2016
There’s a scene in Antoine Fuqua’s bland, uninspired remake of the 1960’s western The Magnificent Seven (which itself is a remake of the 1954 epic Seven Samurai) when twitchy ex army soldier Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke) comes face to face with Chisolm (Denzel Washington) – the two greet each other like old friends, both acknowledging how age has caught up with them. For fans it’s a fun moment, as this reunion marks the first time since Training Day (2001) that Denzel, Hawke and Fuqua have made a film together. This moment happens early on and the film never again comes close to recreating any kind of feeling from its audience for its characters – if you make a film called The Magnificent Seven you might want to inject some personality into at least one of them, otherwise you’re left with this; an ensemble of actors far better than the material they’ve been given, some who try desperately to put some charisma into the proceedings (Chris Pratt), others who act lifelessly on autopilot through everything (a disappointing Denzel) or some who just appear to be in a completely different film (a bizarre Vincent D’Onofrio).
A menacing, but wasted, Peter Sarsgaard is the monotonous villain here, a rich business man who attacks villages and mines… because he can? The film struggles to give him anything regarding a motivation or a real meaning to the story – he’s evil and does bad things, just because. When he attacks and kills some of the townspeople of a village, including Emma’s (Haley Bennett) husband, her and the remaining people band together to convince Chisolm that they need his help – so he sets out to recruit a gang of his own. Here is the films biggest failing – seven potentially diverse, colorful characters are whittled down to mere caricatures; Chris Pratt does magic tricks, Byung-hun Lee uses knives and Manuel Garcia-Rulfo and Martin Sensmeier’s defining traits are their ethnicity – Mexican and Indian respectively. The Magnificent Seven could easily lose more than half of their team and the film wouldn’t notice. Pratt, Hawke and Denzel are given the most (and only) things to do, while the rest are just there in the background. This lack of focus on group members extends to their ‘bonding’ scenes, where they sit around over meals or witty banter and get to know each other, the film desperately trying to insist that these men are loyal and ready to die for each other.
So, where the film lacks in characterization or plot, it makes up for it in its spectacular action scenes? No. Whether it’s frantic shoot outs with dozens of nameless henchmen or a go for broke final shoot out that breaks a record for how much things can be shot onscreen and still be incredibly dull, Fuqua struggles to stage these shoot outs with anything regarding a clear idea of where anyone is at anytime. All the gruff men wearing cowboy hats soon blend into a blob of bodies to be gunned down – the irony being that we never really see these henchmen do anything that bad, so the so called Magnificent Seven look like a group of bloodthirsty murderers in comparison. As the film limps to the finish line it presents everything in the most dull, unexciting way imaginable; several set pieces that had potential to pop instead fizzle out and even the eventual showdown with Sarsgaard is anticlimactic in the worst ways.
Not even one thing about this film is magnificent, let alone seven.
Verdict
