The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven has a lot of flaws, and the acting isn't good enough to carry the lack of plot and character development. Some of the action is cool, but it's not really enough to make it worth watching.

The Magnificent Seven got mixed reviews, but I was hoping it could be carried on the virtue of the actors. Turns out it couldn't. The plot is ridiculously simple, but you know that going in, so they really need to do some character development or have some cool tricks or something, but they don't. It felt really tired and unispired. The whole "defending a small town with tricks" thing has been done to death. You've got to have some spectacularly impressive tricks if you're going to make it entertaining, and they didn't.

I did like the aspect of having such a variety of characters. I liked the Asian guy's different fighting style, and the Native American guy looked super cool. I missed that Robicheaux was Cajun, but that would've made a lot of sense. Ethan Hawke was entertaining to watch. I didn't fully buy Denzel or Chris (who seemed to just be playing himself again). D'Onofrio's performance was amazing, as usual. It was great when he came barreling out of nowhere and killed the Pidgeon Brothers. The Mexican guy didn't seem very authentic. He didn't have much to work with. 

I was bummed that Matt Bomer died so early. And his wife was weird. Why was she the only person in the church who wasn't completely covered up? And her reading of "it was magnificent" at the end was so lackluster. I did like the guy who wound up being her companion, though. But everything with her and as a whole felt really superficial. I did like a lot of the action stuff, especially the Asian guy's parts.

I did spend a minute trying to figure out if I understood everyone's motivation for defending the town, and aside from Denzel, I basically came up with "they don't care if they die or not and they don't have anything better to do" for everyone. I seriously doubt the Mexican guy would've helped. All Denzel offered him was "I won't try to bring you in," and I think the Mexican guy would've just shot Denzel right there and called it good.

Some of the musical cues were gratingly over the top. It was really sad watching over half the good guys die. I didn't like that at all. Although they were kind of putting Robicheaux out of his misery, so that probably wasn't so bad. Watching this made me miss Deadwood. That was a lot better.

Peter Sarsgaard was really interesting as the bad guy. It seemed like the character was on coke or something. It would've been nice if they had addressed that. Maybe that explains why he walked into the down like that. It didn't seem terribly logical. And I don't know what's to keep some other person from coming in and doing the same thing he did, except now half the townspeople are dead and all the heroes are gone.