– By Mark Glass –
Remake of a Cowboy Classic – Seven, si; Magnificent, no
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Why re-tool a classic? It’s almost impossible to duplicate, much less top, the progenitor. More likely, one might attract new fans from a later generation. This one misfires on a couple of key fronts. Badly.
Casting – The 1960 original gave us Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn among the good guys, and Eli Wallach as the head of the plundering gang a village of poor Mexican farmers hired them to defeat. That’s a lot of legends for any oater. This one has Denzel Washington gathering a septet comprised of Ethan Hawke, Chris Pratt (a/k/a Mr. Anna Faris) and a handful of formulaic types. Individual characters, warts and all, were fully developed in the first. We never learn much about this new set of heroes… or feel that we’re missing much from whatever their backstories may have been. We still get the promised “Seven,” but they’re waaaaay short on the “Magnificent” half of the title.
READ THE FULL REVIEW AT CLAYTON-RICHMOND HEIGHTS PATCH:
http://patch.com/missouri/clayton-richmondheights/movie-review-magnificent-seven
