The Magnificent Seven (1960)

The Magnificent Seven, another of my guilty Secrets in that this was the first and only time I have ever seen it. It's on every year, yet I always missed the start or forgot. Then when I probably could watch it I'd recently seen Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (the film that this is based on) and quite frankly I fell in love with it. Not really being all that keen on Samurai films, or (at the time) three hour foreign films, I found myself quickly engaged and enthralled by the film. How on earth could this Western (another genre I wasn't too keen on, and indeed have only recently begun to explore) possibly be as good as that. What is the point of watching it? Well; the simple answer is that it doesn't even come close to the dizzying heights of The Seven Samurai, but watching it this long after that film It does reveal a few charms of its own that stop it from being entirely pointless.

For those who've not seen it, the film revolved around Seven Individuals who are thrown together through organisation and circumstance, and are tasked with protecting a poor village from a gang who take all their crops and prevent them from making a living or even eating properly. They do this not for money (in most cases), but because it is the right thing to do. I guess it is this honour that makes them magnificent rather than simply just The Seven...

For the seven, you probably couldn't have asked for a better cast. Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn. and James Coburn among others, and the main bad egg being played by Eli Wallach; you've got yourself a movie. All of them do their things very well, and without descending into caricature they manage to convey their characters main flaws and attributes with little effort or screen time, With seven main characters there is a danger of confusion as to whom is doing what, but luckily the cast are superb and are the main reason for watching this film.

As for the rest of it, it's fine enough, never gets boring, but never really excited me either. Like I say, I would recommend the Seven Samurai to anyone willing to listen, but this one I would say that the times it is on TV should be plenty, it's usually a Sunday afternoon, so if you're in a normal job and don't work retail like me then catch it then, otherwise I'd hunt down the original.