THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN

(l to r) Vincent D'Onofrio, Martin Sensmeier, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ethan Hawke, Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Byung-hun Lee star in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.
(l to r) Vincent D’Onofrio, Martin Sensmeier, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Ethan Hawke, Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Byung-hun Lee star in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures’ THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.

Bodice ripped buxom widow beseeches black clad bounty hunter to bring unlovable rogue, Bartholomew Bogue to book.

The black knight, Sam Chisolm (didn’t John Wayne play a character called Chisolm?) played by Denzel Washington channelling Richard Boone’s Paladin, assembles a multicultural mercenary force, to aid the damsel in distress.

A Mexican, a Comanche, A Chinese, and a trio of Caucasians, who obviously love a stoush more than money.

The template is much the same for the recent spate of Marvel super hero pictures featuring the Avengers – or the X Men – a group of diverse specialists pitted against a monster intent on dirt domination, in this case the reptilian Bogue, given cold blooded, dead eyed personification of evil megalomania by Peter Saarsgaard.

Certainly, Vincent D’Onofrio as the scalp hunter Jack Horner is a frontier version of Bruce Banner and the Hulk, and viewers can cast their own illustrious allusions on the rest.

Music by Simon Franglen after James Horner after Elmer Bernstein with a dash of the Morricones hints at the original theme but withholds it until the end, as if the heroes, the surviving and the fallen, have earned their anthem.

Cinematographer Mauro Fiore, who won an Oscar for Avatar and is Fuqua’s go to lenser, gives us a glorious panorama of the American West and costumer Sharen Davis, an old hand at Old West garb having done star sartorial splendour for Tarantino’s Django Unchained, gives significant and wondrous wardrobe to wrap these cowboy combatants.

Maybe not magnificent, but this reboot is certainly memorable.

Haley Bennett and Chris Pratt in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.
Haley Bennett and Chris Pratt in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Columbia Pictures’ THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.