The Toronto International Film Festival opened last night, and Venice finishes tomorrow, with a most venerable classic, updated. Again. Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Seven Samurai, set in Japan in 1586, appeared originally in 1954. It has never been bettered. But in 1960, John Sturges brilliantly adapted the story to the Wild West in The Magnificent Seven, take one. Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and others save a village of Mexican peasants from a local gang of bandits, in magnificent Panavision. A classic in its own right, too.
Yet now apparently ripe for revision. The concept of these cowboys nobly rescuing humble Mexican farmers unable to do anything for themselves is no longer politically pleasing. So here, 56 years later, is, if not a complete remake, at least a PC makeover from African-American action director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer).
This time it’s set in the American South, where a town of hapless white settlers is threatened with destruction not by gangsters but satanic capitalist Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), who wants their land for his inhumane mines, murdering them freely to encourage them to sell up.
Egged on by a fiery young woman who happens also to favour sleeveless tops (Haley Bennett), the townsmen recruit seven ace warriors.
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Leading them is supercool killer Sam Chisholm (Denzel Washington) out for revenge for what happened to his own family. Chris Pratt plays the gambler, likeable enough but, to be frank, no Steve McQueen. Ethan Hawke is former Civil War super-sniper Goodnight Robicheaux, this time not so much having lost his nerve as suffering from full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder.
They are joined by man-mountain Vincent D’Onofrio, as an indestructible woodsman, or to put it another way, a bear, barely disguised. Korean star Byung-Hun Lee plays knife-throwing martial arts wizard Billy Rocks and Mexican actor Manuel Garcia-Ruffo is super-fast laughing outlaw Vasquez. Then there’s terrifying Comanche warrior Red Harvest, in full warpaint, formidably played by Martin Sensmeier, an actor of properly Koyukon-Athabascan and Tlingit Indian descent.
They’re stylishly dressed, Denzel always in black, glittering belt buckles featuring large, and the weaponry has been pumped up too: high explosives and a Gatling gun. But the film follows what is now an over-familiar trajectory — recruiting, fighting, preparing, fighting again... Perhaps the very theme belongs to another era? Maybe some classics should just stay classics.
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