The Magnificent Seven

Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven is the transitional western from those old John Wayne, John Ford movies to the more modern ones. Within a few years after its release in 1960 the spaghetti westerns and Clint Eastwood would usher in a new brand of cowboy movie. It contains the elements of old; cowboys having lots of gunfights with bandits. However, the cowboy/good guys are not so cut and dry as in the past.

A village south of the border hires seven gringo gun fighters to defend their village against a roaming band of outlaws that periodically stop by to steal whatever they want. Led by the quiet Chris and his right hand man Vin, they collect their group. There is Harry, who comes along because he thinks something bigger is afoot like hidden gold. There is Bernardo who befriends the local children. Lee has a questionable past. Britt is known for his knives as well as his gun. Last but hardly least is Chico. He spends most of the movie trying to impress the veteran guns for hire.

In old westerns the good guys were good guys plain and simple. The 7 gun fighters here are all family less drifters. The most telling scene is when Chico rides up with a girl from the village and says, "They're afraid. She's afraid of me, you, him. All of us. Farmers! Their families told them we would rape them." Chris adds, "Well we might. But in my opinion you might have given us the benefit of the doubt." Even the villagers that hired them do not trust them.

Throughout the movie we learn that the seven heros are not perfect. They are in fact just men who have yet to grow up and face real responsibility. Bronson has this great line that he says to some boys who called their fathers cowards, "You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to."

The Magnificent Seven is crammed with great lines. "We deal in lead my friend." "If god didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep." My favorite line is when Chico sees Britt shoot a guy from a far distance, "That was the greatest shot I've ever seen." Britt barks back, "The worst! I was aiming at the horse."

The movie ends brilliantly on an ironic note. Chico, the young worshiper of gun-fighters, ends up being the one to leave his profession and settle down. To seal the message that being a cowboy should not be the desired goal for all men, Chris says, "The old man was right. The farmers won. We lost. We always lose." The Magnificent Seven, or at least the surviving three, finally grew up, and with this movie, so did the western film genre.

Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven

This movie does feel much more modern than the typical Westerns of that era.  Maybe this is due to it being a remake of The Seven Samurai.   Until I sat down to watch this again I hadn't realized it was released in 1960. I had assumed it was released closer to 1970.

The main reason it feels so modern is because of the depth and moral ambiguity of the main characters.  These aren't clear cut good guys.  They're mercenaries, not white knights.  When Calvera  tells them, "We're in the same business."  Vin's reply isn't a denial, but rather, "Only as competitors."  Brynner's Chris even dresses completely in shades of black, which in the 1950s Westerns, would have marked him as a bad guy.

I agree with you Eric about the script providing some great lines.  There are some moments of humor sprinkled throughout to keep the story from becoming too heavy.  You mention Britt's "I was aiming for the horse." line Eric, but my favorite funny line is Harry's sarcastic, "Yesterday I fell in with a fast crowd that hangs out around the fountain. We got around to predictin' the weather and didn't break up until twilight."

How you could write about this movie and not mention its musical score by Elmer Bernstein, is beyond me Eric.  The theme music is perfect.  It's a rousing score that will stick in your head.  It's the type of music that once you've seen this movie you will never forget it.  I'm not usually the type of person who even notices movie music.  I'm just not wired that way, but this isn't music that will allow itself to be ignored.  It's as big a part of the movie as any of the seven.

I'm not normally what I would consider a Western fan.  They're have been some great ones, but the genre often seems repetitive and derivative of itself.  The Magnificent Seven is definitely one of the great ones.

Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven.

I’ve been meaning to watch the original Kurosawa version of this movie for years. Now after seeing The Magnificent Seven for the first time I want to check out Seven Samurai even more to compare just how much they copied from it. This is definitely a great western with a wonderful cast. Eric, I know this is a 50 year old movie but did you have to give away how many of them survive?

I concur about the iconic score. It keeps pace with the action as the movie gallops along. And the dialogue is quite memorable. One of my favorite lines is spoken by Lee when he refers to himself ironically as, "The deserter hiding out in the middle of a battlefield."

Just to offer a bit of criticism I will mention that two of the seven are underused. Brit the knife expert (Coburn) and Lee the dandy of the group (Vaughn) have (according to the IMDB) just 11 and 16 lines respectively, in the entire movie. By the end I felt I knew more about the other five members of their gang, while these two remained enigmas. But then maybe that is part of the script’s brilliance, making me want to know more about these men.

Eli Wallach was several years older (a full 18 years older than Horst Buchholz, the youngest member of the gang, who died in 2003 at the age of 69) than all of the seven members of the man in black’s gang but he has outlived six of them; Robert Vaughn being the only surviving member of the original Magnificent Seven.

Now that I have finally watched this classic western I look forward eagerly to Seven Samurai.