The Magnificent Seven

I'd never seen The Magnificent Seven before this weekend. My dad kept mentioning he'd loan it to me, but we never got around to it.

To be fair, I wasn't that enthused. The older I get, the more I find myself wary of things - movies, books, video games -  that are highly regarded. I tend to build them up to much, then find myself disappointed they aren't the GREATEST THING EVER. I'm trying to work on that. I was also concerned that with such a large cast of heroes, things would feel too crowded. You know how it goes sometimes; everyone's jostling for screen time and the thing becomes more about who's in each scene than what's happening. The third reason was some review I'd read that compared it unfavorably with Seven Samurai, which is where the plot for Magnificent Seven came from. But hell, if I wouldn't watch films because they didn't stack up to Akira Kurosawa's work, I'd never watch any movies.

In a lot of ways, the first concern was undercut by the third (even though I haven't gotten around to Seven Samurai, either). The movie managed to keep itself from feeling overly stuffed. Mostly by having a hierarchy where some guys get a lot less time than others, so they're not meant to be as important. Chris and Vin (Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen) are the stars, so they get a lot of scenes. Then there's Chico and Bernardo, then Harry, Lee, and Britt. I did think John Sturges (or the screenwriters, whether that's the credited William Roberts, or Kurosawa and his fellow screenwriters) did a good job of giving each guy a few moments to themselves, so I could get a little invested in them. The connection Bernardo had with the three kids, or how Harry would use every down moment to quiz someone about the fabulous wealth that was obviously hidden somewhere around here. I think Griff was shorted the worst, which irritated me as a fan of James Coburn. The smart thing there was they made him a man of few words, so on the occasions he did speak, it carried more weight.

I'm not sure how I feel about Chico's romantic subplot. It felt shoehorned in at first, like some quick concession they made to 'appeal to female audiences', or however they'd have described it. The more I think on it, the more I can see it fit. Chico's the kid, the one who's just starting on the path the other six have walked for a long time. He's caught up in a lot of fanciful notions about what the life of a hired gun entails, but this gives him a chance to see the reality of it. The dying, the fact that you sell your life along with your gun, the fact the same people who ask you to save them will be glad when you leave, because they fear you as much as the people you're protecting them from. Faced with all that, Chico figures it might be better to get out while he still can. Maybe he realized he doesn't have to prove anything to anyone at this point. He survived where many others didn't, that's enough.

In some ways, the the film makes me think of some of Leone's later work, mostly the bit at the end about how the farmers win, while the gunmen always lose. You could throw in Bernardo's speech to the boys about their fathers' courage. It's kin to Leone's idea that you shouldn't get involved with revolutions because they come and go, and it won't make much difference in your life, so don't sweat it. Worry about your friends, your family. The gunmen (or the soldiers/revolutionaries) will go on killing, so keep your head down and let them take care of each other. It's not totally similar, obviously, since the farmers did get involved and fight for themselves, but still, when it was all said and done, most of Calvera's men are dead, and so are four of the Seven. The ones that survived on either side are leaving (with the exception of Chico) to try and find some other place they can do the same things to make a living. Meanwhile, the farmers pick up their tools and go back to farming, just as they were before.