Review: The Magnificent Seven

SHARP SHOOTER Denzel Washington plays Warrant Officer Sam Chisolm.

Cinema
Ciara Galvin

NEXT week Galway’s Patrician Musical Society is taking to the stage for ‘How the West Wasn’t Won’. The show is a parody of cowboy films and tells the story of ‘The Bank of Cowpat’ and how it was robbed by Doc Vacation and the Half-in-the-Wall Gang.
The Bank Manager ‘Loan-Arranger’, calls on the assistance of Camility Jane and the local sheriff, Wyatt Twerp, to set up a posse. Outlaws, Butch Chastity and the Suntan Kid are also peeved, as they intended to rob the bank themselves.
It sounds like a musical that will have audiences in stitches, a ‘Blazing Saddles’ type effort, which I must admit I’d prefer watching to the more traditional genre.
Westerns haven’t been lighting up box offices in recent times, other than the successes of ‘Django Unchained’ and ‘True Grit’, there hasn’t been much by way of classics.
This year’s offering comes in the form of ‘The Magnificent Seven’, the remake of the '60s film is directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke and Haley Bennett among others.
The gun-slinging flick has had a strong debut in America with talk that this can be attributed to Denzel’s starring role. For a guy who can count ‘Training Day’, ‘Man on Fire’ and ‘He Got Game’ in his back catalogue, it’s no surprise that Denzel gets bums on cinema seats.
The premise of the film is the baddie Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) takes over the mining town of Rose Creek, and slaughters a group of locals after they attempt to stand up to him.
After the slaughter Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), and her friend, Teddy Q (Luke Grimes) go to the nearest town to seek help. Warrant officer Sam Chisolm, played by Denzel, declines to help their cause at first, but gets involved when he learns that the instigator of the heinous crimes is Bogue.
Not being a lone ranger or ‘Loan-Arranger’ for that matter, Chisolm sets about putting together a group to take back Rose Creek for its townspeople.
Gambler Josh Faraday is the first recruit and is played by the likeable if a little predictable Chris Pratt. Like most films he stars in, Pratt gets some of the best one liners in this.
They are later joined by Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), knife-wielding assassin Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), tracker Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) and Mexican outlaw Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo).
You can see how this film could be mistaken for a parody with some of the above names.
The vigilante group have just one week to attempt to train the townspeople into defending themselves at all costs, even if that cost is murder.
The misfit group works well to a certain extent when you have the various personalities bouncing off each other, but some less developed characters fade into the background, namely Vasquez.
Bennett does well as the victimised and God-fearing Emma and Denzel gives off a ‘Man on Fire’ like performance, righting wrongs for a woman while also settling some of his own scores.
At a running time of two hours and 13 minutes, I felt it was on the long side. Perhaps I’m just more of a parody fan and would happily sit through three hours of cowboys singing and dancing instead.

Rating: 5 out of 10