“For me, the action is the juice. I’m in.” That’s a line from Michael Mann’s “Heat,” a great film about the violence of desperate men, a better-written and more exciting thriller than Antoine Fuqua’s remake of “The Magnificent Seven.” The quote is relevant because it shows in nine words the character’s motivation for continuing to rob banks past the point of sanity. He does it for the money, the camaraderie, the juice. The new magnificent seven do it for… what exactly?
They are brought together by Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett), a woman none of them knows. Her antagonist is Bartholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), a land-grubbing mining magnate with a “leave the bodies where they lay” disposition. His company rolls into the Cullens’ home in rural Rose Creek, blowing away local businesses and businesspeople, like Emma’s husband.
At the moment she’s most in need of vengeance, from the waving heat comes a man in black shirt, black ‘kerchief and black denim astride a black horse – an iconic figure. His name is Sam Chisholm, but Chisholm is Denzel Washington, not the other way around.
Chisholm enlists Josh Faraday (Chris Pratt, prattling) on his mission to save Rose Creek and then, as with current superhero films, there is a lengthy introduction process for a diversity of flat supporting characters. Rounding out the seven are Vazquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Mexican who is inevitably “loco”; Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), a silent Native American stereotype; Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), an over-named, drunken Confederate; Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), an Asian man described as “petite”; and Jack Horne (Vincent D’Onofrio), “a bear wearing people clothes.”
This crew is unmotivated. They don’t care much for justice so they must want their cut from the sack of money Chisholm is given… but it might as well be filled with washers, for it is never opened. At one point Emma even asks, “Why are you doing this?” and there isn’t a convincing answer. The only point of narrative interest is wondering in which order the men will die. Despite a few halting attempts, the buddies are never seen bonding as they do in superior films about impossible jobs, like “Heat” or “The Wild Bunch” or “Rififi” or, of course, “The Seven Samurai.”
And what is it about Rose Creek that makes it so hard for townsfolk to leave after Bogue’s death threat? There aren’t a lot of roses or creeks and downtown is like a carnival midway where the popguns fire real bullets. Fuqua films nearby landscapes in computer-generated, ur-Western artificiality where Monument Valley is just three days ride from Sacramento. There are galloping long shots that would be excellent for commercials of Marlboro Men but one shot in particular – of fresh graves on a hill bathed in pink light – would have looked more naturalistic if they’d filmed a few crosses in Fuqua’s back yard.
Nic Pizzolatto, praised to the skies for writing “True Detective” season one and shredded for writing “True Detective” season two, delivers another dud. He brings little freshness to this screenplay and repeats half-baked metaphors like this puzzler: “What we lost in the fire, we’ll find in the ashes.” Perhaps somewhere in the soot he might find the remnants of a better script that was set to the torch.
In the entirety of the film, the biggest beef expressed by Chisholm and Faraday is for the compadre who won’t fire his gun. What, then, is the film about if not man’s insatiable wish to kill his fellow man for fun or profit? Not to mention our insatiable wish to watch it – CNN streaming live from Syria or “The Magnificent Seven” in a theater near you.
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