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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

'The Magnificent Seven' an uninspired popcorn flick

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Critics of Hollywood’s reliance on sequels and remakes add another arrow to their quiver with the release of director Antoine Fuqua’s latest collaboration with Denzel Washington, “The Magnificent Seven." The duo’s previous project, “The Equalizer” (2014), served as a delivery vehicle for Washington to mow down bad guys, and “The Magnificent Seven,” which was released nationwide on Sept. 23, is no different. It merely substitutes Massachusetts for the Old West and gives Washington a team to lead.

That team, with standouts Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt) and Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), is made up of a solid cast but isn’t given enough room to establish the camaraderie that can make or break a team-up movie. Pratt and D’Onofrio’s one-liners and whispered asides got the audience laughing, but the charm of the original 1960 John Sturges film, itself a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai” (1954), is largely absent, only hinted at by a brief snippet of the 1960 version’s Oscar-nominated score played over the closing credits.

The remainder of the dialogue is merely functional. The involvement of "True Detective" (2014-2015) scribe Nic Pizzolatto is only apparent in the occasional philosophical musings of sharpshooter Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke).Writer Richard Wenk,who penned “The Equalizer” as well as several other recent action films, seems to simply repeat his process from film to film, creating the distinct feeling that one has seen this movie before even though it just came out.

However, the focus here is, of course, on the action, precipitated by the unabashedly evil Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who has threatened to slaughter the town of Rose Creek if its people do not make way for his mining operation.Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), whose husband is killed by Bogue’s men,hires Sam Chisolm (Washington) to save the town and take revenge on Bogue.

Once Chisolm and his cobbled-together crew arrive in Rose Creek, the race is on to prepare the town's defense before Bogue returns to make good on his threat.

Unfortunately, the ensuing violence fails to make up for the uninspired rest of the film. More pitched battle than old-fashioned shootout, the action is incoherent and bloodless. Scores of gunslingers seem to materialize in front of each of the seven heroes everywhere they go, popping up like shooting range targets in hats and cowboy boots.

Fuqua makes no effort to establish a clear idea of where things are in the town, making it impossible to tell who’s winning or really what’s happening at all. Not to mention that the strategies of both the attackers and the defenders make little sense. John Refoua’s editing muddies the waters further.Refoua has almost entirely edited films directed by Fuqua since his work on “Avatar” (2009), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. It would be unfair to Refoua to lay all the blame at his feet because, as with many action films, the decision to obscure violence is usually related to budget and the desire to avoid an R-rating from the MPAA. Or, as when Horne leaps over a railing to tackle a man off a horse, it can be related to the actor’s lack of parkour skills. Instead of the whole stunt, Horne is only seen leaving the ground and then crashing down with his target. The actual moment of impact is left to our imaginations.

But whatever the reason behind the frenetic editing, many of the weightier scenes feel rushed. When Chisolm squares off in the middle of an empty street in the final duel, the shot of the black-clad Washington framed by bodies on the ground and a snow-capped mountain range is held for only the briefest of moments. It’s almost a thumbing of the nose at traditional Westerns, a smug acknowledgment by Fuqua and his veteran cohorts that they know they’re churning out a commercial product rather than making this movie out of artistic inspiration.

Perhaps best illustrating this is the final scene, which follows the model of the classic ride off into the sunset. Rather than ending things there, Fuqua has attached a bizarre coda, an entirely CGI scene of some of the defenders’ graves in a field of waving computerized grass. It was clearly tacked on and screams of post-production meddling on account of test audiences or studio involvement — precisely the kind of change that typifies safe commercial filmmaking.

Summary 'Magnificient Seven' offers nothing more than a dull take on the original Western.
2.5 Stars