Released in 1960 and directed by John Sturges, "The Magnificent Seven" is about a Mexican peasant village oppressed by a group of bandits, led by Calvera (Eli Wallach). The village leaders resort to hiring seven gunfighters from America to help defend their town. The seven gunmen are played by Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn and Brad Dexter.Despite the contrived plot, based on Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954), you can't beat the lusty score, the superlative locations and the excellent main cast (the villagers, by contrast, are mostly weak). Unfortunately, the movie's ruined by hokey script flaws. For instance (***MILD SPOILERS ENSUE***), Chico (Buchholz) is able to effortlessly infiltrate Calvera's bandits, utterly fooling them, even though there were only 32 of them by this point (rolling my eyes). Even if Calvera & his brigands failed to make out Chico's face, which is a big IF, his dialogue & accent would've given him away. Keep in mind that he was just an unseasoned teen.Another prime example is the village leaders' sudden cowardly turnaround (i.e. betrayal), which totally contradicts their earlier resolve. Yes, I realize they learned that the bandits weren't run off and that they were going to return to the village out of desperation, but there were only like 30-32 bandits left at this juncture and the combined forces of the seven gunmen and the fighting villagers now had the opportunity to annihilate the thugs for good (***END SPOILERS***). The sad thing is that both of these script hitches could've easily been fixed, but this kind of lame writing reflects too many Westerns before the 60s when the modern Western came to the fore with "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961), "Hombre" (1967) and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969).The film runs 128 minutes and was shot in Mexico and Old Tucson, Arizona.GRADE: D+

Having to endure the continuous pillaging of their village by a gang of bandits led by a notorious outlaw named "Calvera" (Eli Wallach), three Mexican peasants go north to a town on the American side of the border to obtain some weapons to defend their village against him. However, upon talking to a gunman named "Chris Adams" (Yul Brynner) they are convinced to hire gunmen instead. Although they cannot afford to pay much Chris accepts the job and offers to recruit others as well. Soon he winds up with 6 good men and together they all toward the Mexican village and a confrontation with Calvera and his men. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film was a fine Westernized adaptation of "The Seven Samurai" produced back in 1954. Although all of the actors were highly competent, I especially liked the casting of Eli Wallach who used a good sense of humor to highlight a masterful performance. Be that as it may, I enjoyed this movie and have rated it accordingly. Above average.

The "group of guys" movie if that's what it's called (I don't know if it has an established term), is a type of genre film in which a group of relatively diverse characters band together either to solve a problem or commit a crime. They are sometimes recognizable with a number referring to the number of characters in the title but many do not include a number. Often, the "team" is made up of name actors. Recent offerings, most of which are of the heist variety, include "Ocean's 11", "Tower Heist", "The Italian Job", and "The Usual Suspects". Older ones include "The Dirty Dozen" and "The Great Escape". Often the characters are assembled by a "leader" character of sorts before the mission is carried out. One of the earliest which may have provided the prototype for all "group of guys" films is "The Magnificent Seven" with Yul Brynner as the "lead", similar to Danny Ocean of "Ocean's 11".The plot of "The Magnificent Seven" is not terribly original as far as these kinds of films are concerned, although it's not so much the plot but the characters and how they play out on screen. The story derives from Akira Kurosawa's "The Seventh Samuri" and MS is essentially the same story set in the Old West. It's main innovation, in addition to the "group of guys", may have been the beautiful on-location shooting in Mexico that makes the film as scenic as it is. Many films prior to The Magnificent Seven had been shot on-location with lots of studio scenes. (I wonder if they'll release a cleaned-up version of the original. The four "Magnificent Seven" films are available in a blu-ray set but they may simply be a straight transference from film to Blu-ray without much of a face-lift as the DVD appears to be.)In a small village in Mexico in the late 19th century, some humble farmers keep getting everything they've harvested ransacked by the old west equivalent of Al Capone, Calvera (Eli Wallach), and his merry band of banditos, the Mexican equivalent of the James-younger gang of around the same time. The villagers believe if they allow Calvera to continue pillaging, he'll never stop until the village becomes nothing more than a starved out ghost town. A small entourage rides to a US border town to buy guns. They stumble across an altercation with a visitor and some locals concerning the proper burial of a dead Native American. Two gunslingers (Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen) keep the peace, preventing the town from becoming like wooden Swiss cheese. The Mexican entourage impressed with what they saw, ask Brynner to help them with their "problem" back in Mexico.Brynner then begins assembling a group of gunslingers to combat Wallach and his group of sombrero-wearing thugs. Each character is introduced with a scene which tells us something about who the character is and their specialty in combat. This bringing-the-group-together sequence of scenes has become so prevalent in these films it's almost a cliché. In the recent Ocean's 11 remake, Clooney as Danny Ocean does the same thing. We see one of Ocean's potential recruits in one of their exploits before Ocean taps him to become part of the team. The same idea occurs in about the first third of The Magnificent Seven. Other notable character actors who fill out the "team" are James Colburn, Charles Bronson (who also played in "The Dirty Dozen"), and Robert Vaughn. Part of the plot which I assume was the idea behind the title "The Seventh Samuri" is that a young gunslinger Chico (Horst Werner Buchholz) wants to join the group but the older gunslingers believe he's a bit too green.The seven then come to the Mexican village to await the return of Wallach and company. We experience the typical "W"-shaped story arc where things are bad, they get better, before becoming intolerable again. The final denouement of "The Magnificent Seven" is a bit weak compared to the rest of the film. That said, it still holds up reasonably decently as one of the better westerns prior to the Eastwood Spaghetti westerns. Brynner and McQueen have few lines and they always seem to do better in films where they don't have too much to say. Their on-screen presence fills in where dialog is superfluous. It's still a classic of two genres: the Western and the "group of guys". Although I wouldn't exactly call it masterpiece filmmaking in the way some later westerns are, particularly "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" (2007).

If you watched "Seven Samurai", you can't missed the almost identical story & heroes. "The Magnificent 7" is exactly that, not "based on", but exactly that: the American, Western version of that old Japanese "gem"!Recently, a very new version released (this year, 2016). Better battle scenes, more action, special effects, many actors (stand-men), etc., like all modern Hollywood films. But... lack of screenplay, of dialogues, of acting (Washington couldn't save by himself the film). This one... maybe old, without lot of fighting, with "good looking-dress up" actors (the old Hollywood didn't liked the "dirty" - real - cowboys), but... here, we have SCREENPLAY, ACTING!A very good film, worth to watch it any time, even so many decades ago. "Da...da-da-da...Da-da-da, da-da" (main music theme)!