#365DaysOfWriting — Day 140
The Magnificent Seven
“I seek righteousness. But I’ll take revenge.”
And so begins Antoine Fuqua’s remake of a remake. Fiery Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) says these words to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), after bad guy Barthomolew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) proceeds to mow down half the inhabitants of Rose Creek, including Emma’s husband Matthew Cullen (guest appearance by Matt Bomer).
That’s one of the best things about this remake — it gets down to business without wasting anybody’s time.
Soon after that opening burst, Sam starts assembling his team — and we’re subsequently introduced to a gambler, Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt); a sharpshooter, Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke); a knife-wielding assassin, Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee); a skilled tracker, Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio); a Native American, Comanche Warrior Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier) and a Mexican outlaw, Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo). Everyone comes with the baggage of a past, but Fuqua doesn’t choose to dive deep into that — except for Sam Chisolm’s past.
This is a good old-fashioned Western.
It has a few nods to the original(s) — the townfolk training sequence, for one. Chris Pratt’s Josh Faraday reminds you immediately of Steve McQueen’s Vin Tanner… oh well, obviously it does — it’s a REMAKE! Nic Pizzolatto (of True Detective fame) has written a crackling screenplay that moves at a nice pace — not TOO fast, because that would ruin the charm of the characters, and not TOO slow, because that would dilute the eventual stakes. He gets it just right — we are intrigued by all his characters and the climax, when it arrives, is absolutely amazing. Mauro Fiore’s cinematography is what really makes this a throwback to the good old-fashioned Westerns — sprawling landscapes, silhouettes of men on horses against the setting sun, saloons with swinging doors, and the best of them all, those gorgeous guns. Each gun used here looks like a souvenir that I want to keep. Especially Sam Chisolm’s silver colt revolver. And the score by James Horner and Simon Franglen is spot on for a modern day adaptation of an Old West film — it complements Mauro Fiore’s expansive cinematography beautifully.
The other impressive performance comes from Haley Bennett.
Her fiery Emma Cullen reminds me of Hailee Steinfeld’s Mattie from True Grit. She displays gumption, desperation and vulnerability in equal measure, and that’s what makes her character truly remarkable. To put it simply, she can cry and wield a gun with equal panache.
