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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.
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