Eagerly anticipating this week ... (6-24)

Eagerly anticipating this week ... (6-24)
Luca Guadagnino's Challengers (2024)

9/20/2021

The Magnificent Seven (2016) - Fuqua makes a noisy party trick out of the western

 

A golden seven across a grey sky with the seven actors in heavy get-up at the bottom makes up this macho poster for Antoine Fuqua's The Magnificent Seven

Seven men gather to help the intimidated citizens of small frontier town Rose Creek fight and prevail over the evil tyrant industrialist Bartholomew Bogue.

 

The Magnificent Seven is written by Nic Pizzolatto (The Killing (2011, TV-series)) and Richard Wenk (Vamp (1986)) and directed by Pennsylvanian master filmmaker Antoine Fuqua (Bait (2000)). It is a remake of the same-titled 1960 hit western by John Sturges, which was in turn based on Seven Samurai (1954) by Akira Kurosawa.

Modernly cast with a diverse group of actors, Fuqua pulls the trigger in the West with mighty explosions, CGI, shoot-outs upon shoot-outs and cocky stars in thinly sketched parts. It rumbles and bumbles, - but why are we supposed to care?

The Magnificent Seven doesn't look or smell like the West we know from the genre's best pictures. It feels phony, unnecessary, long and dreary.

 

Related posts:

 

Antoine Fuqua2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess 

The Equalizer (2014) or, Mr. Swift Justice

 






Watch a trailer for the movie here

 

Cost: 90 mil. - 107 mil. $ (different reports)

Box office: 162.3 mil. $

= Big flop (returned 1.51 - 1.80 times its cost)

[The Magnificent Seven premiered 8 September (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 133 minutes. Several other stars and director John Lee Hancock had been rumored to head the remake before Fuqua was hired and assembled his cast. Shooting took place from May - August 2015 in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Louisiana. The film features the last score of great composer James Horner, who passed away in 2015 with his friend and collaborator finishing his work. The film opened #1 to a 34.7 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another 3 weekends (#3-#4-#4) and grossed 93.4 mil. $ (57.5 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 7.9 mil. $ (4.9 %) and South Korea with 6.8 mil. $ (4.2 %). Fuqua returned with Ice (2016, TV-series), The Receipt: The Gift (2017, short) and theatrically with The Equalizer 2 (2018). Denzel Washington (The Siege (1998)) returned in Fences (2016); Chris Pratt (10 Years (2011)) in Passengers (2016). The Magnificent Seven is fresh at 64 % with a 6.00/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

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