The Magnificent Seven

Even though both modern day and classic cinema, as well as American History as a whole, overlooks the fact that there were Black cowboys in the Wild Wild West, there have been a few mentions here and there in the world of Hollywood that have thankfully stood out.

Crowd (gasping): "A Black sheriff?!?!"

Blinken: "He’s Black???"

Dave Chappelle: "Hey! It worked in Blazing Saddles!"

The fun loving Bart turning out the German seductress Lili von Shtupp while also turning the world of Hedley Lamar on its head after wearing a KKK sheet is something that I will never forget. And yes I am well aware of the fact that I just used a quote from Robin Hood: Men in Tights to bring up the movie I was actually referencing in Blazing Saddles but I did that for your benefit just in case you missed out of some early Chappelle freshness.

And then of course there was Mario Van Peebles in the forgettable yet timeless Western drama Posse; a film that even his brothers skipped out on seeing. But hey, you can’t fault a man for being ahead of his time; you just have to simply give him a nod of respect and move on.

Well with such influential predecessors to build upon, I’m just happy that Ang Lee never decided to cast DMX in Brokeback Mountain as that would have definitely brought an end to hip hop and the Black culture as we know it! (In DMX voice) "Hey yo dawg! Can I get you to spit on your hand for a little bit of lube? Aarf! Aarf! And make sure you wrap up yo! I’m not trying to catch any sores! I wanna keep it nice and lovely back there! Ya heard? Nice and lovely! Aarf aarf! "

Well in The Magnificent Seven, Antoine Fuqua does his best to bring us a modern day take on the 1960’s classic which starred Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. And just in case you were wondering, no he didn’t cast DMX for this film either. Now whether or not you’ve actually seen the original, when you take into account the fact that it had those two stars in it, you have to figure that the first movie is going to be pretty hard to beat. But Fuqua went into this massive undertaking knowing this and proceeded to go out and bring in the surest thing there is in Hollywood right now in the form of Denzel Washington.

Washington plays Chisolm, a skilled bounty hunter who gets recruited to help out the small town of Rose Creek by the recently widowed Emma Cullen. Emma’s husband’s death was a by-product of the savage and sinister Bartholomew Bogue’s (Peter Sarsgaard) terrorizing of this vulnerable town. And the sad part is that this town is a community that’s mostly made up of hard working farmers whose only action when it comes to guns has come in the form of maybe squirrel hunting. So they are no match for Bogue’s army of hired guns that he has in place to control the town’s citizens as well as their local mine.

Things have gotten so bad that Bogue has given the town an ultimatum of either selling their land to him at a third of its actual price or to be forced off of their land with no compensation at all. So Cullen is left with no other option but to reach out to Chisolm and offer him all the money the town has left in order to convince him to help them in any way he can. Chisolm eventually agrees and begins to assemble a posse of seven outcasts that is mostly made up of former bounty hunters, gunslingers, and wanted men to help him take on this suicide mission.

Now if you have any previous experience with Fuqua at all, then you already know that he excels when it comes to making films that involve over the top bad men and undermanned and outnumbered protagonists. The good guys have to overcome a wealth of obstacles to have any chance of survival and they typically do so in spectacular fashion; see Training Day, Shooter, The Equalizer, etc. Well this film is certainly no different. Seven has everything you want in a Western including shootouts, standoffs, card tricks, and of course a whore house! And while I was a little worried when I saw that it received a pg-13 rating, there turned out to be just enough gun play and explosions in it to keep even the most blood thirsty action junkie satisfied. Washington as usual commands every scene he’s in and Sarsgaard seems to play the money hungry scoundrel to a tee. But once the final credits begin to roll, the character that everyone will immediately start talking about is Vincent D’Onofrio’s Jack Horne. He’s a basically a big bear who runs around and grabs, beats, shoots, or clubs anyone to death who is in his way; and all the while doing so with this high pitched Kermit the Frog voice. It is simultaneously one of the funniest and freshest things you’ll see on screen this year.

Chris Pratt seemed to be having fun playing the cunning trickster Josh Faraday as he provides plenty of comic relief for the film and someone even woke up and pulled Ethan Hawke out of his coffin to play the sharp shooter Goodnight Robicheaux.

Seven won’t go down as a classic but if you like Westerns, it’s certainly entertaining; and considering the fact that Bridget Jones’s Grandbaby is the only other option for you this weekend, I suggest that you pop in. I give The Magnificent Seven a rating of kind of FRESH!