The Magnificent Seven

 After seeing the new Magnificent Seven starring Denzel Washington a few weeks ago, I decided I needed to finally see the original 1960 version starring Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen. Famously, both films are adapted from the 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai directed by Akira Kurasawa, and the often repeated story revolves around a small, peaceful village being terrorized by bandits. The villagers go out and hire one sufficiently dangerous and brave man who then gathers a team of six other deadly fighters, and together, they defend the town against impossible odds. The basic set up has been used by everything from the classic 80s tv show The A-Team to Pixar’s A Bug’s Life.

Admittedly, I probably should have seen the 1960 version first before seeing the newest iteration just so I could know how the one evolved from the other. But I didn’t and so now I’m left to make sense of my impressions. 

 First, there are, of course, minor differences, choices made in terms of content and casting that differ between the two. The terrorized Mexican village of farmers in 1960 becomes a terrorized Californian village of miners. The super-WASPy Seven of the title in the earlier film becomes a racially diverse group of steely eyed killers in the later one. The lone female character with a few scarce lines and a role as girlfriend and damsel in distress becomes a strong female co-lead who is a lynchpin of both getting the action started and in the final moment of crisis in the new film.

The other major difference I noted between the two is the good old fashioned 21^st century maximalism of the newer film. In the 1960 version, seven men fought off a gang of 40 over the course of two hours. The odds are steep, but manageable. In the new version, 40 men in a pittance. Director Antoine Fuqua sneezes and 40 men die. 40 men probably died just getting their lunch on break from filming. No, in the new version, the seven have to fight off an army of over 200 men. It’s surprisingly bloodless given how much blood is supposedly spilled in this version, but the body count is very high. At one point the sweaty, villainous, crazy-evil just for the sake of crazy evilness bad guy Bartholomew Bouge brings out a Gatling gun, that nuclear option of the old west days and turns the village into Swiss cheese. I’m sure if the scriptwriter could have justified Bouge calling in an airstrike with some F-16s, he would have done that too. So the newer version is largely about more – more bullets, more bodies, more heroic shots of the stars framed against picturesque western backdrops.

The original was lower to the ground and less bombastic, but it is also a little quaint seeming now. Having Eli Wallach play Calvera, the ruthless Mexican bandit seems silly now and not just a little wrong. The gunfights are much slower paced and far less visceral. As some of the seven fall in battle, their dramatic deaths with admiring villager boys looking on in tears have the faint whiff of cheese to them.

What the two films have in common is that they are both hymns of praise to actorly charisma and laconic, western masculinity. Each cast is filled with so much stereotypical manliness, watching either movie practically makes you sprout chest hair. I mean, the original cast featured Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn. That combination alone probably created a testosterone cloud that’s still floating somewhere over northern Mexico. 

Both films charge forward fueled not necessarily by a great script but by the charisma of the actors who make you want to watch them even if it’s not clear why they’re doing what they do.