A small town of Mexico has been ravaged by a band of desperados repeatedly, often leaving them with barely enough food to survive. Every year the same band of Mexicans invade their town, take what they want, and leave destruction in their path. Finally one of the townspeople decides that he has had enough of this, and wants to try and find the resources to fight back. His idea is that if the town can arm itself with enough guns, that they can fight back the raiders. Combining all of the towns valuables, a group of three set off to the Northern border with America in search of someone who will sell them these guns. The unfortunate aspect of this journey, is that the valuables only consist of a handful of trinkets which will not get this town very far in its goal of defense. Seeking out these guns though, they come across a man that will change their destiny and potentially be their savior.

Yul Brynner plays Chris Adams, a man with seemingly no fears, who has found himself in this southern town by chance. There is no real explanation ever given as to why he is there, or what exactly brought him there, but an act of bravery attracts the three Mexican travelers, who track him down with the request to help find them guns. He is obviously a man someone can trust, and it becomes quite clear that they are in awe of this man, even though they know nothing about him. Rather than supply them with guns, he suggests the idea of hiring on gun-fighters to defend their town and put down the would-be raiders. Though at first he doesn't want to volunteer his services, he is soon drawn into the plight of these men, and does everything he can to find more men to go back and defend the town. The only problem is that he can only offer $20.00 per man that volunteers, and thus the choices for selection thin themselves out.

The real key to this story, is that Adams is doing what's considered "right", and his only success at putting together a group of "defenders" is going to lie within the hearts and morality of those who also want to do what's right. This leads to a really good group of gun-fighters, who through circumstances created within the story, decide to offer their services and go to Mexico to defend this town. Among the group are characters played by Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, and Charles Bronson just to name a few. The casting is excellent and this lends well to their characters, as each is able to bring something authentic and interesting to the roles they play. It makes them stand alone in their parts, but at the same time I think it takes a little away from the film and the cohesiveness of what ends up being the Magnificent Seven men that set out to defend this town.

For those that don't know, the Magnificent Seven is based on a famous Japanese film named The Seven Samurai. Now that film was a great piece of cinema, and to try and repeat that would prove to be almost too difficult for this Americanized version. Where that film was based on Japanese samurai defending a village of Japan, this one takes place in the Old West as a group of gun-fighters try to accomplish the same goals. The translation loses a lot of what the original film was trying to portray, and what the ended up doing was presenting a lot of flaws in this 1960 version of the story. Gone were the undertones left for the audience to discover for themselves, and in their place were obvious plot devices, transparent characters with unrealistic presentations, and an overall lack in cinematic excitement. Yes the cast was good, and the story was relatively interesting, but the film really failed to stay exciting, and rather than using real drama of story, they just used way too many gun shots that seemed to become quite repetitive. The story of 7 men against an army of dozens could have worked better if they didn't rush through sequences, and they let the story tell itself without hitting the audience over the head with obvious "tells" in the story. The Magnificent Seven proved to be an interesting film, but at best I would classify it as Average. If you want to see this story done right, I highly recommend giving Seven Samurai a chance instead.



Review of The Seven Samurai




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD