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It may fall short of magnificent, and of its 1960 source material, but director Antoine Fuqua's "The Magnificent Seven" is a sturdy, entertaining Western tale of outsiders banding together for a righteous cause.
In the frontier town of Rose Creek, in 1879, the farmers and townsfolk are meeting to discuss the threat to their town by Bartholemew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard), a robber baron who wants to buy up the town and surrounding land for his gold mining operation. Bogue has a swarm of private security and has the sheriff's department in his pocket — so he's untouchable when he kills townspeople who stand up to him, as farmer Matthew Cullen (Matt Bomer) does before the opening credits.
Matthew's widow, Emma (Haley Bennett), leaves town to find someone who will be her town's champion. She finds Sam Chisolm (Denzel Washington), a warrant officer who takes down fugitives across the territories, and offers a fortune if he will come to Rose Creek. Chisolm, who knows Bogue's reputation for ruthlessness, knows he can't do the job alone, so he starts recruiting the best fighters he knows. They are:
• Joshua Faraday (Chris Pratt), a gambler and quick-draw shooter.
• Goodnight Robicheaux (Ethan Hawke), a former Confederate sniper who's still nursing demons from the Civil War.
• Billy Rocks (Byung-hun Lee), knife thrower extraordinaire and Robicheaux's right-hand man.
• Jack Horne (Vincent D'Onofrio), a God-fearing mountain man who's good with guns or a hatchet.
• Vasquez (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), a Mexican bounty hunter.
• Red Harvest (Martin Sensmeier), a young Comanche who's a dead shot with a bow and arrow.
Together, these seven face Bogue's army of hired guns. And if you have a doubt how it turns out, you never saw John Sturges' 1960 Western — or Akira Kurosawa's 1954 classic "The Seven Samurai," from which the Westerns spawned.
Fuqua has assembled a strong cast, starting with Washington as the smooth shooter who knows both sides of the law. He's nicely matched by Hawke, his old "Training Day" co-star, who adds some rakish flourishes to his tormented character. Pratt gets to display his roguish charms, Lee exudes quiet cool as the silent assassin, D'Onofrio adds some spiritual depth to his burly character. Bennett is tougher than she looks as the town's heroine, and Sarsgaard is forcefully nasty as a tyrant who equates greed with godliness.
Fuqua and his writers, Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto, do such a commendable job of establishing the characters that the movie flags somewhat when it's time to start fighting. The gun battles are rough affairs, haphazardly staged and chaotically shot. The body count is also staggering, with Bogue's hirelings and freshly trained townsfolk falling in numbers that render meaningless the MPAA's rating system (which let this bloodless bloodbath off with a PG-13).
There are small charms throughout "The Magnificent Seven," from the easygoing camaraderie among the title characters to the subtle ways composer James Horner (who died before the film was completed; Simon Franglen finished the score) subtly tips his cap to Elmer Bernstein's much-borrowed 1960 theme. The result here won't erase the memory of Sturges' classic, but it does pay due homage to it.
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'The Magnificent Seven'
A team of outsiders band together to defend a town from a robber baron in this entertaining remake of the 1960 Western.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, Sept. 23.
Rating • PG-13 for extended and intense sequences of Western violence, and for historical smoking, some language and suggestive material.
Running time • 134 minutes.