This sequel the critically acclaimed film works as a stand-alone adventure. It features a band of six sharpshooting adventurers and criminals who come to the the aid of 300 peasants and their friend who has also been kidnapped. The peasants are rounded up from three villages and used as slave labor by 60 vaqueros and farmers in the Sierra Madre mountain range. The leader of the vaqueros is looking for posterity by building a church for his villagers, albeit on grounds of persecution and slavery. Return of the Seven plods ahead with little backstory. There isn't much energy in the performances. For viewers accustomed to the original it will seem a bit like a remake. Yul Brynner's recruits have little impact as characters. The inevitable meeting produces drama before the inevitable showdown.

This was really a disappointment after watching The Magnificent Seven. I know sequels are usually disappointing, but this one had little going for it compared to the original. The only character returning was Yul Brenner, and he looked as if he was going through the motions to collect a check to pay the rent. The outstanding cast that made The Magnificent Seven was was not equaled in any measure by these replacements. Warren Oates did manage to make things interesting in his constant search for women. And, you do get to see one of Mexico's greatest stars in Emilio Fernández, who played the bandit leader.

Return of the Seven is the ill-advised and quite stupid sequel to the rather remarkable The Magnificent Seven. It begins at the newly liberated Mexican village from the first film; a place in which the tale of Eli Wallach's Calvera, and his banishment by that of those brave American cowboys whom pooled together to fight him off, well on the way to being..... how does the opening narration of Peter Jackson's first of three Lord of the Rings films put it? ".......passed down into legend. Legend into myth" - a tale of good triumphing over evil for the ages. Life has resumed for these people, they continue onward to a rousing score with their lifestyle of farming, agriculture and catholicism – nary saying nor doing anything out of turn and enjoying their freedom. But hold on, for the presence of a new foe rears up and chaos once again is brought to the settlement; a foe arriving on horseback with a vast army of others in the time that it takes for one wounded villager to amble their way back to the town so as to warn everyone. One man is willing to stand up to them, the fresh set of bandits' superiority in this regard firmly established as any signs of resistance is stomped out.Beaten and weary, some stragglers escape and make it to a nearby town looking for some kind of help. There, at a bullring, they find Yul Brynner's Chris Adams enjoying the intimate nature of a matador doing his thing, and the level-headed nature that is required to take on such a situation. Adams led the charge against Calvera in the first film with Steve McQueen's Vin (now replaced by Robert Fuller), but is here enjoying a retirement of sorts whilst living in the locale due to some health problems; thus, an image of the man as someone perhaps not up to what the peasants desire of him is inferred. Regardless, he accepts, and with that catalyst begins one of the dafter westerns one will probably ever see. Adams, in spite of who he is, clearly has some sort of role or status, of which is never confirmed, but sees him granted unprecedented access to a nearby jail housing some of the leaner, meaner criminals in the territories. Here, he tries to get them to help with this new set of bandits. It is an access spawning a notion so bizarre, one would assume the modern equivalent of it being the letting out of a group of Broadmoor inmates to help deal with a larger than desired local city-set anti-social problem.But why does Chris even stop at just seven to go up against the seven hundred? The cynical nature of the answer lies with the fact the film is an exercise in brand name filmmaking. The original was a film in which the desperate call went out to anyone wanting to aid the town, so we always felt numbers were going to be sparse and we enjoyed the ambiguity around some of them doing it out of their own kindness with some of the others purely for the cash; here, he has the freedom to choose and preplan. The bandits are led by Lorca (Fernández), a big man with an even bigger hat. Crucially, and in stark relation to Sturges' wondrous first film, the fresh set of bandits and their policies are initially kept in the dark; the film later revealing them to be a collection of men led by a man flitting from isolated village to isolated village gathering the men, but leaving the women, and forcing them to a set location so they may aid in the building of a monument in memory of members of Lorca's deceased family.We recall Calvera's politic on the village from Sturges' first; something that saw him take many crops, but still leave them with barely enough, and reiterate he'll offer protection - something which tore the villagers and forced them into an ethic corner upon which they deduced ridding themselves of him was the better course of action, something that came to fray them even more when bloodshed became more plentiful. Here, someone who would be entirely successful in his goal had he just been a little more courteous, is placed up against a number of nymphomaniacs; criminals and serial-killers inexplicably let loose form their cells under the watchful eye of Adams and charged with trying to stop the man. We dislike "The Seven" about as much as we sympathise for Lorca's plight, which isn't much, but there is still that sentiment.There is a small exchange between Adams and that of Chico, a villager, detailing the fact Adams never actually learnt his surname thus creating room for Adams' character to really know with whom he fights this time round, although it doesn't materialise. In spite of the crew being the menaces to society that they are, we anticipate an arc with room for some sort of redemptive element, but it does not come. We sense Lorca's scenes with his men would have been better in Spanish, and with subtitles, instead of in English; the peasants, when they speak to each other, for dozens of seconds at a time, speak in Spanish, but for these scenes there are no subtitles. The whole thing builds to a messy fight sequence, a finale in which hundreds are involved and yet nothing is chaotic enough to prevent Adams and Lorca successfully finding one another amidst the battlefield to engage in a showdown destined to end the proceedings, proceedings we really wanted to end long before they do and proceedings that exist for no other reason than The Magnificent Seven worked as well as it did and money was to be made from the demand.

If the 'Godfather II' was THE example of why a gifted director might consider making a sequel to a great film, this turkey is the classic counter-example of why no-one should make one (leaving aside the obvious point about wanting to milk a very successful cash cow a second time around). The only actor from the first (truly magnificent) film to appear is Yul Brynner in the lead role and all of the others who appear are decidedly 'B list' (if that) character actors who simply do not have the charisma to awaken much interest in their 'stories' or fates amongst the audience. Some attempts are made at repeating the original film's reflections on life and the transitoriness of glory/earthly admiration but in comparison with, say, Robert Vaughan's nightmares in the original film, these are stilted and unconvincing, whilst also being delivered (like most of the dialogue in the film) in a wooden, unenthusiastic manner. Even the gun fights/action scenes are poorly composed and almost totally 'flat'. The only things the film has going for it really are Bernstein's music (identical to the original) and the presence of Brynner, who could always carry a scene or, as in this case, even a whole film. I doubt if anyone would want to sit through a viewing of it more than once, though. I also suppose that one should be charitable, given what was to follow in the form of the two subsequent 'sequels' after this (by which time even Brynner had jumped ship), both of which were absolutely and totally dire, leaving the original template of a truly immortal Japanese film which underlay the whole enterprise entirely (and mercifully) forgotten.