A poor village of farmers in Mexico is being terrorized by a bandit and his men.  They are forced to give all they have every season to them.  They finally decide to fight back. They go to the town near the border and hire some lone guns to fight the bandits.  In comes The Magnificent Seven.

This is the American remake of the Kurosawa classic Seven Samurai, which I reviewed a few months back.  When I saw Seven Samurai I had a few complaints, mainly of the ending battle between the samurai and the bandits.  Here however I have no real complaints about it in this version.  William Roberts and Jim Struges were able to make it more of a believably enjoyable action sequence as opposed to the overly detailed and methodically correct war between two forces.  It may be due to the technological changes (guns and rifles instead of arrows and swords) but it worked for me here where it couldn’t in Seven Samurai.

Where this movie increases in overall enjoyment it lowers itself to a normal action film level in impact on the viewer.  Whereas I didn’t find myself bolstering to my DVD player to hit that play button again after watching Seven Samurai I did understand how profound the filmmaking and storytelling was in it.  Here however I could probably watch it twice over again without a problem (an hour less runtime helps that fact) because I felt myself more enjoying it than questioning the nature and beauty of the tale.

The film shows its biggest problems in a lot of the character development. It’s pretty much waved over in this version and it shows mostly in the character of Harry Luck (Brad Dexter) a bit, the same role that Toshiro Mifune played in the original, in order to keep the story moving. Even with the recruitment of the seven we never get this feel that the seven more than just appeared.  Even when some of the seven men met their end during battle it felt like the filmmaker eventually became too afraid to change too much so he had to rush their end.  It’s a love/hate relationship with me and this movie.

Overall it’s a great western which has the trouble of having to live in the shadow of its original.  How can I not love a film that stars Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and Robert Vaughn?  I can’t.  So if you haven’t seen it I say watch it for sure, and also check out the original film Seven Samurai.

IMDB says 7.8/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 93%

I say 8.5/10