Skip to main content

Magnificent 7 Review

What I liked: All the gun slingers are ridiculous larger than life characters. Most of them were pretty fun and I think the actors probably had fun with the parts. And despite them all being ridiculous, I was pretty sold on the idea that if you wanted to raise a tiny mercenary army in the old west, this is probably about what you would come up with. For having a large number of principle characters and little time to spend on each of them, they did a good job of giving them personalities and interesting guessed at backstories. I liked the traps the good guys set and the explosions. The comic timing was pretty on point. It felt like an old western. Granted I haven't seen that many: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Shoot out at the OK Corral, Man from Snowy River (yes I know that one is Australian but I need to pad my numbers), Rango (too far?). To me the shots, plot, and characters seemed to fit into the Old Hollywood version of the wild west. The soundtrack was good. It would be interesting to watch the same long shots of people on horses with different music, I bet it could easily be recast as relaxing, fun, or even romantic instead of dramatics with the right music.

What I didn't: While I have lingering confusion about the role of a sheriff in the old west, my major concerns are in the town people's battle preparation plan. Apparently this town has a high frequency of gun fights. Shouldn't they come up with a better bystander protection program than hiding in buildings with wood siding? Remember how bullets go through that, even if you didn't know that we get to see it enough in the movie that you should probably know that by the end of the film. So really they should invest in some metal siding or a bunker. I would also be completely satisfied with the run for the hills approach where you run up over the ridge line to be protected by the huge mound of dirt. Acceptable plans do not include leaving all livestock in pens in the middle of the town (they conceded the element of surprise, which might justify this tactic, when they invited the bad guy to the gun fight), waiting until the last minute to have anyone hide, and only hiding people in what appears to be a very flammable half underground cellar. Also if dynamite is fair game, they really could have had more optimal positioning of the charges. I am also a little confused about the number of people in the town. There were about 100 people in the church at the beginning, there were about 30 people in the cellar, about 500 town people died in the shoot out, and there were about 1,000 people in the town at the end. Clearly this town has a serious immigration imbalance. Or they are setting up a zombie cowboy sequel. There were some cringe worthy deaths. The final Indian knife dual was kind of weird, it felt obligatory and they either should have made it cooler if they wanted to keep it or just skipped it. The movie experimented a little with trying to make the church a central part of the cowboy community; some things they tried worked some did not. I didn't like having the gun fight resolve in the church.

Who should watch this? It earns the PG13, it isn't graphic but some of the deaths are...crunchy, main characters die, and the bad guys are well and truly bad. I think the main draws would be people who like westerns and people who want to see a lot of horses and some impressive shots of lots of horses.

Would I watch it again?  It was fun to see it with my friends, I doubt I'll rewatch it.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ready Player One Review

What I liked: I bet all of the developers loved making this film, I saw so many video game and movie references in the background of scenes. I bet all the developers just inserted their favorites like the ninja turtles, a whole platoon of halo soldiers, and orcs. That it was a video game made it possible and exciting to have all kinds of absolutely random physics and logic defying things happen. Obviously, I loved the T. Rex and who would not enjoy seeing Mechagodzilla or a cyborg orc driving a monster truck? Early in the movie they made good use of the video game architecture in a way that reminded me a bit of secret rooms in super mario. The characters visit the world of the Shining, which was amazing and hilarious. I loved the variety of characters, vehicles and weapons that we get to see and it is more fun (at least for me) that they draw from more than strictly the 1980's. I also really liked the music, for the most part the selections were great for the scenes. The book was...
3 comments
Read more

Solo Reveiw

What I liked: The architecture of a heist movie has 4 stages: stage 1 explain how hard the job is, stage 2 come up with a ridiculously elaborate plan to accomplish the job and acquire hard to find equipment, stage 3 execute the plan but something goes terribly wrong, stage 4 sneaky twist and huge pay off. The Solo movie takes the bold move of streamlining the first two and a half steps, picking up with stage 3.5 "Something goes terribly wrong". This saves everyone the slow wind up to the actual action. This saved time translates into a movie with not one but all the heists. We have grand theft, customs evasion, train robbery, vault robbery, the classic hustle, and of course smuggling. I guess they may have tried to crowd too a little much in because they also almost always skip stage 4. This stage skipping also means that we don't know if the things they are doing are actually hard or they are just incompetent. I'm surprised more heist movies don't explore this ...
2 comments
Read more

Wrinkle in Time Review

What I liked: I liked Charles Wallace, that kid was funny. I liked that the ladies in crazy dresses were warriors and that the kids were warriors too. You know me I'm all about a good action movie with awesome fighting, but I liked that at least in this universe the defining characteristics of warriors were compassion, kindness, and love. Similarly, I liked that the bad guys weren't launching a massive military conquest of the universe, I mean everyone is doing that these days. Surprisingly, I liked the Mrs's dresses. They were crazy and over the top but it was fun that they changed with every teleportation and that they were completely absurd. The outfits were rather like the Mrs's wearing them, over the top and fantastical. Knowing all of them from other shows I may have had some unfulfilled expectations. At no point did anyone say "You get a wrinkle, and you get a wrinkle, Everyone gets a wrinkle!" which I must admit was a little disappointing. I also think...
2 comments
Read more