Popular reviews

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  Review by Count DuLacula ★★★★½ 12

  We deal in lead, friend.
  -Vin

  I think most people can't log The Magnificent Seven without mentioning Akira Kurosawa and Seven Samurai because they know if they don't, someone from the Letterboxd Cinephile Police will mention in the comments how it pales in comparison to Samurai, which is a masterpiece, and how the western apparently owes everything to Kurosawa.

  What most self-proclaimed cinephiles fail to mention is that one of Kurosawa's biggest influences is John Ford and Hollywood westerns. It's not because their ignorant of the fact or dispute it, it's something that was said by Kurosawa himself. It's because since they don't view Ford as an auteur like Kurosawa, they really don't want to mention him. They only want…

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  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★★ 4

  Qualitative comparisons to The Seven Samurai are fruitless. Apples & Oranges. However, here are seven magnificent things about The Magnificent Seven:

  (1) Steve McQueen riding shotgun on a hearse.

  (2) Idiots who mistake James Coburn’s apathy for cowardice.

  (3) Yul Brynner’s regal gate. Did he walk like that around the house?

  (4) Eli Wallach’s menacing practicability and red ruffled tux shirt.

  (5) The lonesome arithmetic of the hired gun, and the burden of a gun being less than the responsibility of a father.

  (6) The setting of the peasant’s village in a gorgeous crook in sawtooth mountains, a valley worth fighting for. Elmer Bernstein's rip roaring theme.

  (7) Glorious widescreen color.

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  Review by Andy Summers 🤠 ★★★★★ 12

  Westerns don't come much better than this. John Sturges' US remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is as exciting as it is legendary. A staple of Christmas television in the UK for many years I grew up looking forward to it's Yuletide appearance on the schedules.
  The movie? Seven gunfighters take on sixty Mexican bandits for a meagre fee from some poor farmers. That's it in a nutshell. But it's brilliant. Throw in one of the most unforgettable scores of the 1960's from Elmer Bernstein and you have the stuff of legend. And that's what this film has in abundance,myths and legends.
  Steve McQueen is my hero. There we go it's out there. I don't care about the rumours of…

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  Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★★

  We come cheaper by the bunch

  A group of fighters come together to defend a village against a gang of evil bandits

  Some stories are so great they’re told over and over again in various forms throughout the years.

  Seven Samurai, Battle Beyond the Stars, The Three Amigos and nearly every episode of The A-Team.

  This magnificent version is all about the cast. Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen lead the gang with the coolest of cool and both Charles Bronson and James Coburn demonstrate why they’re destined for stardom.

  Can you imagine what it must have been like to sit in a theatre in 1960 and hear that Bernstein score for the very first time? I mean what are the odds that your head would explode?

  ”I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.”

  
  Cinematic Time Capsule - 1960 Ranked

  Cinematic Playlist – Steve McQueen

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½ 1

  Sort of the digital to Kurosawa's analog, a high bit-rate but sampled nonetheless.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★ 16

  "I have been offered a lot for my work, but never everything."

  It's hard to imagine how much the western genre owes to Akira Kurosawa, from The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars being direct remakes of his films to the thematic similarities between the ronin and the gunslinger, but this fact stands in starkest relief in the case of The Magnificent Seven, because if it weren't an adaptation of Seven Samurai it would be unimaginable. That's not to say that Magnificent Seven is any worse for its debt to Seven Samurai's existence, but instead that the idea to try to create seven distinct characters in a single story seems foolhardy enough that without Kurosawa's previous success doing so,…

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  Review by Blake Bergman "Various Spaghetti" ★★★★½

  "The Magnificent Seven" is a 1960 western epic directed by John Sturges. As any and all who is connected to the depth of film history should clearly know, "The Magnificent Seven" is the United States Western genre-based remake of Akira Kurosawa's enduring classic "Seven Samurai" (1954). Only six years removed from that effort, the impact of "Seven Samurai" wasn't as prevalent in the pop culture lexicon of the United States as it is now in observance, so naturally "The Magnificent Seven" was an easy film with a seemingly fresh narrative storyline that people were drawn to upon releasement. So many years later after the fact, as "Seven Samurai" is held as essential film viewing, "The Magnificent Seven" isn't hampered by…

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  Review by Bre ★★★★ 2

  I ended up enjoying this far more than I thought. Westerns tend to leave me lukewarm, but this really does have some charm. Yul Brunner and Steve McQueen are both just that cool but put them together and they are really a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

  In full confession, I really only watched this for the impeccable Elmer Bernstein score (the theme is one of my absolute favorite things to drive to), and it is just that good but I couldn't help laughing thinking about how different this film would be if that score was replaced by The Clash's song "The Magnificent Seven."

  I definitely want to rewatch this and I think my rating will increase when I do.

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  Review by {Todd} ★★½ 2

  "If God didn't want them sheared he wouldn't have made them sheep"
  - Bad Guy,

  None of them really feel magnificent to me.

  After much fan fare I was expecting to be blown away by the original The Magnificent Seven but I only found it to be fine. I'm not sure that I can give you a great reason because the film just didn't jibe with me. It just felt really hokey and I was regularly bored. It loses so much of the drama and beauty of Seven Samurai it hardly feels worth the adaptation to me.

  Can't win 'em all.

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  Review by CinemaCl🎃wn ★★★½ 2

  Taking the premise of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece and applying it to the Old West setting, The Magnificent Seven is no match to the Japanese classic but this remake does make some fine-tuned adjustments in order to appeal more to its target audience, and is a competently crafted & consistently entertaining western steered by a magnificent ensemble.

  Directed by John Sturges, the film follows the same path as the original, at least to an extent, and remains fun & engaging for the most part. Not all the changes in the script work in its favour, and the hurried approach does rob the characters of necessary depth. Both the fight preparation & gunslinging action are expertly carried out, and the lively score is undeniably…

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  Review by Krautsalat ★★★★½ 1

  Well, the graveyards are full of boys who were very young and very proud.

  By casting Yul Brynner in the iconic role of bald leader guy they didn't have to include the head shaving scene. That's the kind of slick Hollywood magic that can shorten a 3.5 hour movie down to 2 hours.

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  Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★★

  Altruism seems like one of this film's main themes. You see it in the opening scenes of a burial in Boot Hill where Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen commandeer a horse-drawn hearse in order to see to it that a deceased native American is properly laid to rest against the threat of violence from racist vigilantes who wish to exclude any non-whites from Boot Hill. After that Brynner forms the Magnificent Seven to help a poor Mexican village defend itself against Eli Wallach's small army of bandits who regularly raid the village for food and sometimes its women. The money the village can pay is only 20 dollars per each member of the Seven, who all need the money even…