‘The Magnificent Seven’ review: “Well worth your attention…”

The Magnificent Seven review: Antoine Fuqua takes on a classic – a film with big intentions as it bookends this year’s Toronto and Venice Film Festivals.

The Magnificent Seven review by Paul Heath, Toronto International Film Festival 2016.

Riding out making its world debut at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival is Antoine Fuqua‘s glossy, sun-drenched re-working of the classic story The Magnificent Seven. Leading the cast is Denzel Washington, a Fuqua stalwart who continues his relationship with the director following his Oscar-winning turn on Training Day and, more recently, The Equalizer.

Here, Washington plays Sam Chisholm, a gun for hire/ bounty hunter who is asked by the widowed Emma Cullen (Haley Bennett) to avenge the death of her husband (a fleeting Matt Bomer) – an innocent local who payed the ultimate price at the hands of the monstrous Batholomew Bogue (Peter Sarsgaard) and his ruthless gang of rogues. Cullen pulls together everything she owns for Chisholm to assemble a team of sharpshooting outlaws to fend off the ruthless villain and his band of thieves and bring justice to back to the town.

Along for the ride is the likes of Chris Pratt as cheeky chappie gambler Josh Farraday, sharpshooting legend of the wild west Goodnight Robichaeux (Ethan Hawke), Vincent D’Onofrio‘s superb, vocally high-pitched Jack Horne, Byung-hun Lee‘s knife-wielding Billy Rocks, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo‘s Vasquez and Martin Sensmeir‘s painted bow and arrow arrow warrior Red Harvest – our Magnificent Seven for a new generation.

Fuqua’s version of this classic story employs every western cliché in the book – from Washington’s introduction in the open credits meandering into saloon, through the swinging double doors, to recently deceased dead bodies falling into empty coffins – the action almost drifts into self-parody, but what it always manages to do is satisfy. The film takes its time in assembling the team and constant light-hearted humour is scattered through – most of it coming from the direction of Chris Pratt’s winking Clint Eastwood/ Burt Reynolds hybrid Josh Farraday. As with most of his work to date, Pratt delights in pretty much every scene but it is D’Onofrio’s Horne and Ethan Hawke’s Goodnight who pretty much steal the show with two really well-written characters, both actors relishing the material with every note they speak.

Washington is solid in the lead of Chisholm as one may expect, though the character seems to be the least fleshed out and doesn’t have a whole lot to do – which is a shame as you witness the gifted actor clearly having the time of his life in his first proper western. Saarsgard’s role is the key one however, and the supremely talented actor has developed and executed a memorable villain – essential for a story of this nature – one that screams old-school Gary Oldman with a hint of Christoph Waltz, but one which also never sways into the realms of parody.

The 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven had a lot to live up to, and while the word satisfy has been used a couple of times throughout this review, the film does step it all up a notch in its third act and Fuqua and team unleash one of the most well constructed and destructive action scenes seen in any film this year. It really is an unrelenting assault on the senses and so well-set-up in the twenty-or so minutes previous to it.

Fuqua’s film is nowhere near the iconic stature of its previous incarnation of course, but the 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven successfully defends its existence and is well worth your attention.

The Magnificent Seven review by Paul Heath at the Toronto International Film Festival 2016.

The Magnificent Seven is released in UK cinemas on September 23rd, 2016.