Now that I'm getting older, I've been revisiting movies that have had a reputation of being cherished classics. While some have held up wonderfully, others have had me reaching for Mylanta. The Magnificent Seven is one of them.I think the only reason why it's remembered is that it starred a large number of actors who later became legendary, so people think it's much more epic than it really is. But imagine this movie being cast with less memorable actors and what you're left with is one of the corniest, most cliche ridden Westerns of all time, from the Mexican banditos to the duel between the cocky aggressor and the passive dude who looks like a wimp but defeats him handily in the last second. The Magnificent Seven makes no sense, either. I mean, let's me see if I can get this straight: for no reason at all, a group of guys decide to defend a Mexican village for paltry pay. Not only are they not getting paid anything, they have to go through the trouble of traveling out to Mexico on horseback. I guess we're not supposed to question their motives because according to Hollywood lore, gunslingers were like the knights of the medieval era, who had a duty to serve and protect. Well, sorry, but there was nothing remotely resembling this in the Old West, so just having the gunslingers do this because of some code of honor they were bound by doesn't fly. How the movie starts out is even more ludicrous. Two of them decide to defy a town's refusal to bury an Indian in their cemetery. It's a ludicrous scenario because there was nothing to stop the town from exhuming the corpse once the two men got their way and left. So what was the point?Oh, and how do you like the fact that the Mexicans were poor peasant farmers in an insulated village, but were all speaking English fluently? They were even still practicing indigenous rituals, for God's sake! That's how cut off they were from civilization! The lack of realism of The Magnificent Seven was the least of this movie's problems. The acting, writing and characters were terrible. Why did the movie have to make a point of showing McQueen's character doing a count every time they found a new guy to join their group? We can count. I hated Chico, who was an annoying, pathetic spaz and from what I vaguely remember was a mashup of both Toshirô Mifune's character and another character from The Seven Samurai. Yul Brynner walked like he had explosive diarrhea and was trying to desperately hold it in the entire time; you can see how his wooden, stilted performance in this movie inspired his casting in Westworld as a robot. He walked and moved like an android the entire time.Robert Vaughn was...ick. His character was pathetic, and so was his acting. It seemed like he was trying to channel Robert Walker from Strangers on a Train. I hated every scene he was in. James Coburn and Charles Bronson were tolerable. Steve McQueen was insufferably cocky in this film with his hand gestures; I wanted to clock him. The last guy was forgettable--so forgettable that I forget the actor's name. Some of the lines of dialogue were pathetic and cliche, especially the line in which one of the village kids rants that the village men are cowards for not using a gun. Oh, gosh...lemme guess...Charles Bronson's going to say they're brave for choosing not to use a gun. Yup. Nailed it.Normally, I'd give a film like this a 1/10. The only reason why I'm not is that Eli Wallach was, as usual, in top form, and the score was....wait for it...magnificent. The movie was also well shot. Otherwise, it was meh in all other respects.

This is, of course, is an Americanized version of "The Seven Samurai" from Japan. Yul Brynner is a gunfighter looking for work who encounters a pair of poor Mexican farmers who have had their village attacked and pillaged by a bad guy played by Eli Wallach. In a strange bit of casting, the native New Yorker is the Mexican bandit. Brynner gathers a crew including Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Steve McQueen and Robert Vaughn to help him in his quest to defend the village. The scenery of Mexico is beautiful and the cast is excellent. The remake stars Denzel Washington as the leader and the story is moved to the United States. I prefer the clearer story in the original version, although both are very good movies. I write this in 2017 and all the stars are now dead. I watched the new version first and the 1960 version a day later. I can highly recommend both.

First saw this film in 1960. I was 8 years old, and was bowled over by the action scenes you did not see on TV. Found out about Kurosawa 20 years later. Saw Seven Samurai on the big screen shortly thereafter. Now, by any account, Seven Samurai is easily in the top 40 movies ever made. Held in reverence by most of the Hollywood greats. Compared with the Magnificent Seven, Seven Samurai is at least one or two levels of magnitude greater. Acting, cinematography, direction, score, and editing are all world class. Action scenes, especially with horses, are breathtaking. Takashi Shimura delivers one of his finest performances. Toshiro Mifune effortlessly ranges from idiot to major pathos in one character, and is physically impressive despite his inferiority complex. Other samurai actors are really impressive, like the always cheerful Yoshio Inaba, and particularly the stoic yet brilliant swordsman Seiji Miyaguchi. These characters have impressive depth and complexity. Going back to the Magnificent Seven, the character complexity isn't there. More than a few actors are miscast. Several scenes need to be edited out. The theme song is often poorly placed where mundane things are happening. Jerome Moross' score for The Big Country is significantly better than Bernstein's. much better.

When I grew up it was sci-fi that took hold, with the advent of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, etc. and new, good westerns were few and far between. However, this was a western that slipped through the filter and struck me as such a good movie. Excellent acting from an all-star cast, an iconic score and archetypal script all contributed to being wonderful entertainment as well as a top-notch production.Having seen literally over a thousand movies, one of the highest praises I can give is to say I still vividly remember scenes decades later. The Magnificent Seven has quite a few scenes that fall under that category.