The Magnificent Seven (2016)

Lots of violence, little morality, little reality and no likable characters. Though not made in Italy, this is a spaghetti western.

This is a nice remake. An equal opportunity shoot them up film, with a battle ending. Lots of little ind... wait, hem, little evils working for Bogue to shoot. Litterally, they replaced the bad indians easy to shoot by bad englishes easy to shoot. Great shooting though, but not enough french to be taken seriously.

'The Magnificent Seven' is perhaps an unnecessary remake - almost 56 years, to the day - but it's just as good as the original. Still the same simple premise - a Western, where a small town is being overthrown by a villain, so they hire a bunch (well, seven, to be precise!) of drifters to help them fight to save the town. It's still set in the 19th century, but the main differences are that the town's not in Mexico this time, and there's much more focus on the church (not necessarily religion).The leader this time is Chisolm (Washington), a bounty hunter (Yul Brenner's character), with Faraday (Pratt) a wise-cracking gunslinger (Steve McQueen's character), Goodnight (Hawke) a former sharpshooter, Billy (Lee) a knife-master, Vasquez (Garcia-Rulfo) the Mexican, Red Harvest (Sensmeier) the Comanche and Horne (D'Onofrio) - the best character - as the mountain man. Still no real motivation for them to help the town is given, but let's go with it anyway. Sarsgaard is good as Bogue, infusing him with plenty of contempt and no empathy. Bennett is OK, but mostly a token female character.Does what a good Western should - plenty of shoot-outs, sweeping vistas, explosions, horses riding and jumping, staring from under hat brims, and a healthy death toll! Has a few slow points in the first half, but the battle for the final 30min or so is done very well. Doesn't necessarily add to the original, but nor does it do it a disservice. A straight-down-the-line 3.5.

There was a guy: Akira Kurosawa. He made some films. Many of them were outstanding. Who cares. Millenials cannot relate to "outstanding". What we want to do is take Kurosawa's basic story, but turn it into "DIVERSITY HIRE 7". Millenials can relate to DIVERSITY HIRES. They've had that BS shoved down their throats for the last 20 years. Then we're going to make sure the DIVERSITY HIRE 7 have no more depth & as much bluster as any "COMIC BOOK 7" would have. Millenials can relate to COMIC BOOK movies. They've also had those shoved down their throats for the last 20 years. But we're not done yet. We have to make sure to give zero reason why any of these COMIC BOOK CHARACTERS would possibly join the "7". Give a reason & the millennials may have to "think". Millenials hate to think. OK, almost done. To top it off, the leader, the #1 of the 7. Denzel. We make his character an amalgam of Clint Eastwood characters. That way, if any non-millennials watch this film they'll feel a faint familiarity. Oh wait, will the familiarity breed contempt?