Two pieces of good news as year's end approaches: (1) the western seems to be back as a contemporary established genre, recovering from a 30 odd-year convalescence as an occasional [albeit often fascinating, viz. Pale Rider, (Clint Eastwood, 1985) or Silverado (Lawrence Kasdan, ditto)] post-modern afterthought, and (2) concurrently The MacMahonian has a second opportunity to title a review entry eponymousily.
Occasion afforded by Magnificent Seven, the 11th feature film directed by Antoine Fuqua, effective if occasional formulaic and unimaginative action thriller director. I mean, I've just gone over his full filmography, seem to recall having seen most of it but only remember details of the last 2, The Equalizer (2014) being OKish (good on the adrenaline, fair to middling on the plot) and Southpaw (2015) forgettable (a dash of adrenaline, pedestrian plot).
Magnificent Seven is a remake of seminal eponymous (John Sturges, 1960) a classical/modern transition western by a director whose work was prematurely heavy with the conscience and memory of Golden Age Tinseltown and which I wish one day to revisit in depth and length. The plot follows broadly the original: cowardly sadistic real estate speculator Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard, pulling no punches) terrorizes small town into selling out for peanuts; introductory sequence massacre surviving widow Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) bumps into and succeeds repeatedly in persuading a motley crew of gunfighters (Denzel Washington, understated and so much the better for it) and other assorted wild West drifters, including mandatory Texican and Injun, into merging into the Seven and face Bogue's posse against forbidding odds, to obligatory bloody effect and final bittersweet victory.
Grossly oversimplifying, the Western comprises of 4 main historical phases (1) classical (inception to late 50s), (2) realistic/”psychological”/spaghetti (60s/70s), (3) post-modern/semi-hibernation (80s-now) and (4) present, still developing but appearing to absorb 2 portions of phase 2 for each of phases 1 and 3, on average, give or take. Magnificent Seven is a perfect illustration of this recipe. It scores full marks on Manichaeism, histrionics and Wild West town gunfight choreography.
Poverty of purpose (épater le bourgeois) and a slight overreliance on CGI/videogame aesthetics (admittedly hard to avoid these days) bar it from greatness.