The Magnificent Seven – Film Review by Robert Dooley

Director: Antoine Fuqua
Stars: Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke

Summer 2016 has been the year of the dud blockbuster with challengers for “biggest film of the summer” failing to live up to expectations. As the days become shorter and the last fleeting glimpses of summer drift away, in limps The Magnificent Seven, the remake/reboot that nobody asked for and, judging by what they have produced, nobody wanted to make either.

The film follows a formulaic plot, fills it with generic characters and puts awful dialogue in their mouths. Following a mass shooting by a wealthy prospector and his goons, token lady character (played by Haley Bennett) who had her husband killed in said shooting, reaches out to Denzel Washington’s bounty with a sense of moral fibre. “I seek righteousness” she says “But I’ll settle for revenge!” and with that Denzel is off rounding up his seven to help him take down the evil capitalist.

Not only is the first hour of the film really boring, it also doesn’t make any sense. None of these characters have any motivation behind joining this expedition. For example, Chris Pratt (here playing Handsome Charming Rogue in the Desert following on from roles such as Handsome Charming Rogue in Space and Handsome Charming Rogue with Dinosaurs) joins simply because Denzel met him in a bar. The rest have even less reasoning and even less character development. Ethan Hawke makes an effort at the start but is eventually dragged down by the poor writing and the fact that he’s the only one really trying to make an interesting character. Special mention must go to Vincent D’Onofrio for having his own “Simple Jack” moment with this film. He is a truly wonderful character actor but his choices for this character are perplexing to say the least and I felt uncomfortable whenever he was on screen. Peter Sarsgaard playing the villain is the only stand out and it’s just such a waste of talent throughout the cast.

Featuring an amount of lens flare that would make JJ Abrams blush, the cinematography is atrocious at times. Shooting directly into the sun. Shooting out of focus, even for close ups. Bad lighting. There was one close up of Chris Pratt where you could literally only make out his teeth. You get the feeling that they knew what they were making was bad so just gave up and got through it as quickly as possible.

The last half hour has the big action set piece which was good but by then you’re done caring. This is a lazy film. This is the kind of film that studios are just churning out because they feel it’s going to make money because they threw money at the cast. Films like this succeeding is why the cinema gets filled with such utter dross. This summer though it seems that audiences aren’t accepting such poorly written nonsense and hopefully this trend continues forcing an increase in quality.

I had planned all along to finish this review with the standard replacing with Magnificent with another M word to indicate it’s bad. But I’m not going to bother. Just like everyone attached to this film.