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In the larger scheme of "Magnificent Seven" being a rip off of a rip off and invoking Kurosawa, his "Yojimbo" has seen a retelling in all of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. However, all of those movies, including "Yojimbo" were an intellectual "rip off" of "Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammett. Hell, that story plays in modern story telling all the way to "Last Man Standing" and "BLUE Harvest".
I caught the matinee for "Magnificent Seven" this afternoon and thought it was a pretty good movie. It's different enough from the 1960 version to stand on its own.
I dug up my quote because as the characters were being revealed, the Comanche was named....Red Harvest.
Looking back over this thread, I see the common theme of "PC" or "Rainbow Coalition" being the main objection. The absolute truth is that kind of objection will not stand up to the reality of Old West History. It's all there folks. I grew up in "The West" and the objections do not match the record. Of course this story is fiction. However, it is not outside the pail of what could have happened. I suppose the biggest objection is that a Black man could not have been a Law Enforcement Officer in the West. Well, there was a very accomplished lawman that was Black and many think that he was the inspiration for....wait for it.... The Lone Ranger. His name was Bass Reeves and I grew up knowing about this man. There are place named after this guy here.
Going through the objections in this thread, NONE of the bad guys are Mexicans (and all of them were in the original) and one of the Seven is a Mexican. It plays for humor between two characters that are obviously fond of each other. North-South, Black-White-Mexican-Asian believably come together. Relationships are carefully established and motives are clear. These are men with nothing left to lose who get a shot at redemption (and revenge) through serving. And that plays waaaaaay closer to "Seven Samurai", in some ways, than the 1960 version of "Magnificent Seven". (Loosely translated, Samurai means servant and this movie makes "serving" a point in unambiguous terms. In fact, it's well-spoken by one of the characters. It's an obvious scene that makes this point.)
While it's not blowing away the competition at the box-office, I've seen that the movie placed in the top five again, so it must have a little something to it to not have totally dropped out of sight...
I saw it last week, and enjoyed it. It's a decent diversion, but the big screen doesn't bring much extra to it. If you feel like a movie, it's worth going to see. But I wouldn't make an extra effort to see it.
It's a very standard old timey western, but a bit more PC. And Denzel delivered, like he always does.
I might see it. I refused to see Wild West and the Quick and the Dead for the reasons mentioned even though fiction, absurd is the word that cannot get me to check em out. Same goes for Disneys Lone Ranger. Though I did see that stupid CGI bit about he and Silver jumping on a moving train. I mean, a motorcycle would be more believable. Even if the LR would have really tried such a stupid stunt, try convincing the horse! I'm intrigued because the female lead is from Ohio, on her way to stardom and not an underage porn star., but I'll stick to the likes of The Searchers or Once Upon A Time In The West, or even Lonsome Dove as some of my favorites I hope they never remake. I did catch a rare western with both the Duke and Randolph Scott and to my surprise, Scott who got billed above Wayne was the bad guy. And the massive fight scene between the two at the end, well, I'm quite sure there were no dumb CGI effects needed to capture my attention and being that Duke got his start in silent westerns as a stunt man, quite convinced he was giving and taking the beating personally, not needing a double.
Maybe if Necca makes Mego esque figures of these, they will consider classic western stars like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott, Joel McRea, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, etc etc
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