The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven
NR | 12 October 1960 (USA)
The Magnificent Seven Trailers

An oppressed Mexican peasant village hires seven gunfighters to help defend their homes.

Reviews
KnotMissPriceless

Why so much hype?

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Raetsonwe

Redundant and unnecessary.

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Sarita Rafferty

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

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Justina

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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OneEightNine Media

Magnificent seven Yeah. I can see why so many people love this movie. And why it still stands the test of time. It has larger than life heroes (all of them being anti-heroes), a charismatic villain, simple enough story that layers into something branching and magnificent. Oh, and the Man in Black is cool as all heck. The soundtrack wasn't my bag at first but it grows on you. There was a recent remake of this flick not to long ago and it was a complete let down. Anyway. This is an excellent film and I would whole heartedly recommend it to anyone

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classicalsteve

The "group of guys" movie if that's what it's called (I don't know if it has an established term), is a type of genre film in which a group of relatively diverse characters band together either to solve a problem or commit a crime. They are sometimes recognizable with a number referring to the number of characters in the title but many do not include a number. Often, the "team" is made up of name actors. Recent offerings, most of which are of the heist variety, include "Ocean's 11", "Tower Heist", "The Italian Job", and "The Usual Suspects". Older ones include "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Great Escape". Often the characters are assembled by a "leader" character of sorts before the mission is carried out. One of the earliest which may have provided the prototype for all "group of guys" films is "The Magnificent Seven" with Yul Brynner as the "lead", similar to Danny Ocean of "Ocean's 11".The plot of "The Magnificent Seven" is not terribly original as far as these kinds of films are concerned, although it's not so much the plot but the characters and how they play out on screen. The story derives from Akira Kurosawa's "The Seventh Samuri" and MS is essentially the same story set in the Old West. It's main innovation, in addition to the "group of guys", may have been the beautiful on-location shooting in Mexico that makes the film as scenic as it is. Many films prior to The Magnificent Seven had been shot on-location with lots of studio scenes. (I wonder if they'll release a cleaned-up version of the original. The four "Magnificent Seven" films are available in a blu-ray set but they may simply be a straight transference from film to Blu-ray without much of a face-lift as the DVD appears to be.)In a small village in Mexico in the late 19th century, some humble farmers keep getting everything they've harvested ransacked by the old west equivalent of Al Capone, Calvera (Eli Wallach), and his merry band of banditos, the Mexican equivalent of the James-younger gang of around the same time. The villagers believe if they allow Calvera to continue pillaging, he'll never stop until the village becomes nothing more than a starved out ghost town. A small entourage rides to a US border town to buy guns. They stumble across an altercation with a visitor and some locals concerning the proper burial of a dead Native American. Two gunslingers (Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen) keep the peace, preventing the town from becoming like wooden Swiss cheese. The Mexican entourage impressed with what they saw, ask Brynner to help them with their "problem" back in Mexico.Brynner then begins assembling a group of gunslingers to combat Wallach and his group of sombrero-wearing thugs. Each character is introduced with a scene which tells us something about who the character is and their specialty in combat. This bringing-the-group-together sequence of scenes has become so prevalent in these films it's almost a cliché. In the recent Ocean's 11 remake, Clooney as Danny Ocean does the same thing. We see one of Ocean's potential recruits in one of their exploits before Ocean taps him to become part of the team. The same idea occurs in about the first third of The Magnificent Seven. Other notable character actors who fill out the "team" are James Colburn, Charles Bronson (who also played in "The Dirty Dozen"), and Robert Vaughn. Part of the plot which I assume was the idea behind the title "The Seventh Samuri" is that a young gunslinger Chico (Horst Werner Buchholz) wants to join the group but the older gunslingers believe he's a bit too green.The seven then come to the Mexican village to await the return of Wallach and company. We experience the typical "W"-shaped story arc where things are bad, they get better, before becoming intolerable again. The final denouement of "The Magnificent Seven" is a bit weak compared to the rest of the film. That said, it still holds up reasonably decently as one of the better westerns prior to the Eastwood Spaghetti westerns. Brynner and McQueen have few lines and they always seem to do better in films where they don't have too much to say. Their on-screen presence fills in where dialog is superfluous. It's still a classic of two genres: the Western and the "group of guys". Although I wouldn't exactly call it masterpiece filmmaking in the way some later westerns are, particularly "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2007).

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Miguel Neto

The Magnificent Seven is a classic Western movie, it really is a good movie, has a great cast, Yul Brynner, Eli Wallach, Horst Buchholz, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and etc, the soundtrack is excellent, the script is based on the script The Seven Samurai of Kurosawa, is a Seven Samurai in the Western, has very similar premises, the photography is beautiful, and the action scenes are very good, the costumes are very good, and the rhythm is medium, The Magnificent Seven is A good movie, but would not enter my top 10 of western movies, but has a good cast and good action scenes, not to mention the great photography and good costumes. Note 7.5

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Tarx

The Magnificent Seven is a 1960's western directed by John Sturges. It's a movie that I had heard of but knew little about before watching, and left me with mixed feelings. There are things that work, and the acting is (mostly) strong, but ultimately the film is dragged down by an agonisingly slow pace. This is 128 minute film which would probably work better if it were half that length. It takes the first 45 minutes before they have even recruited the seven (in a very Avengers Assemble-type-way), and then they go to protect a villain from plundering bandits. The issue is that the plot doesn't really develop from there. Director John Sturges focuses entirely on characterisation instead of genuine story development, so the end result is a film with great characters but a story that drags on and on, which passed its sell-by-date within the first hour. However the plus-side to this is that the film contains some genuinely good characters, who mostly manage to keep it entertaining, even when the pace drags it down. Yul Brynner as Chris Larabee Adams and the great Steve McQueen as Vin Tanner both offer great performances and characters - it is these two that keep the film afloat. The villain of the story, Calvera, played by Eli Wallach is somewhat average but at the same time the exact type of villain you would expect from this type of film, so in that way he serves his purpose. The casting is on- point and there are only a couple of weak performances, so on the whole there are few complaints there. Being a western about 1870's gunslingers and bandits, an audience would naturally assume that this would be a movie packed with action, but unfortunately this is no where near the case. There is virtually no trace of action within the first 70 minutes of the movie, and even after then, there are only two real shootouts, which, although they were well shot and entertaining in themselves, were far too infrequent. In a movie already dragged down by a very slow pace, a bit of action here and there would go a long way; but audiences are bound to be disappointed as they are instead forced to listen to endless monologues about not giving up and fighting to survive, yet ironically we barely see any of this. If you're looking for a movie that focuses mostly on characters instead of action or story, this will probably please you (although you'd be better off watching the 2015 Steve Jobs movie, which does a much better job of both characters and story), but if you're looking for an action-packed Western with a strong story, look away - you will not find that here. Still, the characters are certainly good, and the acting complements them, along with a great, Oscar-nominated soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein that all works together to make this a just-about-enjoyable movie that still, in 2016, has its strengths.

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