BEFORE: Chris Pratt carries over from "Passengers", and I just couldn't watch both "The Hateful Eight" and "The Ridiculous Six" this year without getting to this one too.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "The Magnificent Seven" (Movie #244)
THE PLOT: Seven gunmen in the old west gradually come together to help a poor village against savage thieves.
AFTER: As I said the other day, there are really only about four different stories, when you look at the basic elements, and this is an instance of "put a team together to defeat the evil power". That puts it in good company with recently-viewed films like "The Hunger Games", "Independence Day: Resurgence", "Thor: Ragnarok" and "Justice League", and therefore also "The Avengers", not to mention franchises like "Lord of the Rings", "Star Wars", "Mission: Impossible" and so on. So since "The Magnificent Seven" is based on "The Seven Samurai", that means that by transitive properties when you go out to see "Justice League", you're really seeing "Seven Samurai" for the umpteenth time - a good superhero film may be bringing something new to the table, but at heart it's the same meal that's been served up for a long time.
The dressings of the story usually end up reflecting the current world around us, regardless of whether the film is set in a dystopian future, or a barbaric past, like the Old West - which is why the villain here is a corporate man, and the good-hearted gunslingers are a multi-cultural bunch, with a black man leading and an Asian and Native American thrown in for good measure. How dare this businessman try to make a profit by exploiting workers and running a gold mine! Capitalism is out of control, and it's high time that the ethnically diverse lower class destroys his business and ruins his livelihood! This is the way that today's P.C. crowd wishes that the Old West was, but I doubt it bears any resemblance to reality.
Of course, the businessman doesn't see himself as evil, no evil person ever does. From the Empire's point of view, Luke Skywalker was a mass-murderer, and from Jabba the Hutt's perspective, "Return of the Jedi" is a story about a bunch of rebels who break into his palace, steal his stuff and then kill him. But then this film does go out of way to make Bartholomew Bogue a bad dude, because he torches the town church and kills anyone in the town of Rose Creek who speaks out against him.
Two townspeople, Emma Cullen and Teddy Q, ride to another town, where they encounter Sam Chisholm, a U.S. Marshal, and he expresses interest after hearing the name of their town's oppressor. Perhaps there's some history there, or else he just likes noble but near-impossible crusades. He soon recruits outlaw, gambler (and amateur magician) Josh Faraday, supposedly this was to get his horse back, but I found in general that most of the recruiting here happened just a little too quickly and felt a little forced as a result. I guess times were hard and these men were all motivated by the money, I just wonder if that's a little too simplistic.
The team gets rounded out by an ex-Confederate marksman, his Korean traveling companion, a Mexican fugitive, an older mountain-man game hunter, and a walkabout Comanche warrior. That's 7, the minimum amount of characters required to form a ragtag band with an unlikely chance of success. But at least they had a week to train the townspeople, gather materials and create a plan for the town's defense, and thankfully they didn't pull a "Blazing Saddles" and build an exact copy of the town about a mile down the road. (Having a black man leading the defense of the town was itself enough of a reference to that classic Mel Brooks comedy....)
Also starring Denzel Washington (last seen in "The Equalizer"), Ethan Hawke (last seen in "Gattaca"), Vincent D'Onofrio (last seen in "Mystic Pizza"), Peter Sarsgaard (last seen in "Pawn Sacrifice"), Byung-hun Lee (last seen in "Terminator Genisys"), Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Martin Sensmeier, Haley Bennett (last seen in "Rules Don't Apply"), Luke Grimes (last seen in "Fifty Shades of Grey"), Matt Bomer (last seen in "The Nice Guys"), Jonathan Joss, Cam Gigandet (last seen in "Easy A"), Sean Bridgers (last seen in "Trumbo"), Billy Slaughter (last seen in "Trumbo"), Griff Furst (ditto), Mark Ashworth (last seen in "Logan").
RATING: 7 out of 10 burning wagons
No comments:
Post a Comment